STOCKHOLM - On Monday evening, October 4, Per Gessle will receive the unique STIM-Guitar award. For the first time ever, the award will be presented with a platinum finish.

  STIM, the Swedish Performing Rights Society, protects the interests of authors and publishers of music in Sweden. The award will be presented by STIM’s CEO Kenth Muldin.


  The platinum STIM-Guitar is presented to Per Gessle due to the exceptionally successful Gyllene Tider summer tour where Gessle has composed the majority of the material performed.

Starrox contributed to this article.

• STIM

The “B-side” of the new “2:nd Chance” single by Marie Fredriksson will be called “All You’ve Gotta Do Is Feel.” The song, which is described as having a “jazzy/bluesy” style, is written by Micke Bolyos.

LONDON - The compact disc has at least another five years as the most popular music format before online downloads chip away at its dominance, a new study said on Tuesday.

  Technology consultancy Jupiter Research said in its annual report that in 2009 European music fans will buy 836 million euros ($1 billion USD) worth of music in the form of digital downloads and subscriptions to internet radio services.

  At that level, digital music revenues will account for roughly 8 percent of Europe’s estimated 10.2 billion euro music market. The study does not take into account the surprisingly successful market for mobile-phone ring tones. Read more…

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - The Daily Roxette is proud to present an advance preview of Marie Fredriksson’s new single: “2:nd Chance.” The song is being released to Scandinavian radio stations tomorrow (Monday).



  “Oh thank God I’m alive…”




  Update: Expressen’s Anders Nunstedt gives the single three stingers (out of five) today, and compares the song to The Beatles’ “Free As a Bird” like many already on The Daily Roxette. Other than that he says that Marie is hiding behind the English language, but he also adds that this kind of emotion may have been too much in Swedish. Nunstedt thinks that husband Micke’s music is weaker, while Marie’s lyrics and performance is strong. “After a few run-throughs the song’s bleakness dissipates,” Nunstedt says and concludes “Just give the song a second chance…”

  Aftonbladet gives it three plusses (out of five) and calls it “…an intimate pop ballad with warm Jeff Lynne strings…”.


  TDR Special Presentation created by Judith Seuma and Txiqui.


  Flash Player 6.0 or higher is required.

• Marie Fredriksson - 2:nd Chance (FULL song)
• Marie Fredriksson - 2:nd Chance (mirror, FULL song)
• Flash Player
• Nunstedt’s column (In Swedish)
• Expressen’s review (In Swedish)
• Aftonbladet’s review (In Swedish)

STOCKHOLM - Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund will release a DVD next year, under the prestigious name “Director’s Label”, where directors like Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham have been released before.

  Jonas Åkerlund has directed several videos for Roxette and Per Gessle, but it’s not at this point known if those videos will be included or not. In 2003 there was a specially made DVD named “Jonas Åkerlund” released for electronics company LG’s sales meet in Stockholm, which included all the commercials and most of the videos Jonas had made so far. This is to this date the only place Per Gessle’s solo videos have been released.

  The DVD, made in 600 copies, was never commercially available.

• DVDForum.nu (In Swedish)
• Director’s Label

STOCKHOLM - Per Gessle has been nominated in the Best Swedish Artist category in the Nordic Music Awards - twice! He competes with himself as a solo artist and as a member of the band Gyllene Tider.

  The awards show is produced by three Scandinavian commercial TV channels: TV4 in Sweden, TV2 in Denmark and TV2 in Norway. These channels will broadcast the awards live on October 23 from 8pm to 10pm CET. Many international artists will be performing. Robbie Williams, Tina Turner and Westlife are among those confirmed.

  There will also be another show with only Nordic artists which will be recorded for TV on October 21. TDR suspects that parts of it will be shown during the live TV broadcast.

  Tickets for the both shows are available on the Nordic Music Awards website.

• Nordic Music Awards

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - Marie Fredriksson is back after two years of medication and darkness (and it’s been eight years since her last release, not counting the greatest hits album “Äntligen”)! Together with her husband Micke Bolyos, Marie has transformed sorrow and pain into lyrics and music, full of vital power and confidence.


  Her new solo album, “The Change,” will be released in Sweden on October 27 with the first single “2nd Chance” – a love song that took Marie only ten minutes to write the lyrics for – out on October 6. “A second chance… that’s exactly how I feel when I wake up. I’m eternally grateful for every day,” Marie says.


  “Making ’The Change’ feels like a victory to me. An incredible cool and fantastic feeling that’s hard to describe in words,” Marie Fredriksson says in a press statement released today and sent to The Daily Roxette.


  Marie has had thoughts and plans of a solo album in English for a long while. “Suddenly it felt necessary to do this. I wanted to share emotions and experiences from our worst time. There were moments where I thought I didn’t have the strength to finish the work, but I got by, little by little.”


  For the album Marie and Micke gathered their favorite musicians; Staffan Astner, guitars; Peter Forss, bass; Nicci Notini, drums. Magnus Lindgren and Micke are responsible for most string arrangements on the album. Micke has also produced “The Change” and additionally he plays the keyboards.


  This is an international release, but the release dates in the various countries are different and not yet set.

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - The new single “Solsken” (“Sunshine”) will bring more Gyllene Tider to the airwaves this autumn to avoid the summer enthusiasm from dying out. The song is already getting heavy radio airplay.

  This summer has been specially hot and active for Sweden. “The boys” from Halland have come back and made everyone dance, sing-along and enjoy the tunes and melodies of Gyllene Tider with the biggest tour ever in Scandinavia… some to be part of the history, others to remember their youth, but all to enjoy this summer.

  But now summer is ending and even if it has been owned by Gyllene Tider with an overcrowded tour, multi-platinum album success and a long playing double-A-side single on radio, they want to offer more “Sunshine” to Sweden, because GT doesn’t want this summer to end just yet.

  “Solsken” (8616062) will be released September 29 and the B-sides are “Ordinärt mirakel” (“Ordinary Miracle”) and “Nere på gatan” (“Down on the Street”), both demos recorded at T&A demos.

  The cover design features a picture of a sunny day drawn by Per’s son Gabriel.

  Daniel Alvedahl contributed to this article.

The long wait is over. Today Ginza.se revealed the release date of Gyllene Tider’s “Parkliv” DVD, recorded in 1981. It will be released September 29, the same day as “Solsken” as well as the DVD “Karaoke Hits!”, that was sold during the tour.

• Ginza.se (In Swedish)

LOS ANGELES - Johnny Ramone, the guitarist of the influencial 70’s punk band The Ramones, died Wednesday afternoon at the age of 55. His wife and Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s John Fuschiante were at his bedside when he died.

  Ramone (whose real name was John Cummings) had suffered from prostate cancer for five years. He is the third founding member of the band to pass away. Singer Joey Ramone died in 2001 of lymphatic cancer and bassist Dee Dee Ramone died of a drug overdose the following year.

  A fan of the Ramones, critics raved when Per Gessle released a cover version of the Ramones’s hit “I Want To Be Your Boyfriend” a couple of years ago. Other members of Gyllene Tider also admire their music, with drummer Micke “Syd” Andersson wearing a “Gabba Gabba Hey” t-shirt during the GT25 tour this summer.

HALMSTAD - This summer’s Gyllene Tider exhibition at the Museum of Halmstad has rather unsurprisingly broken the museum’s all-time attendance record. The exhibition has had 16,400 visitors since its opening in June - 10,000 of them in July. The busiest day so far was July 21 when 755 people visited the “Återblickar” exhibition.

  “Återblickar” has broken the attendance record with a huge margin of 13,000 people. The previous record was held by an exhibition about the history of the Hallandsposten newspaper.

  “We know that even though people have written ’You are the best’ in our guest book, they don’t actually mean us,” says Pernilla Börnfors Nordbeck from the Museum of Halmstad. “Many who have come to see this exhibition don’t usually go to museums. We hope they will visit us again.”

  The exhibition will remain open until October 31.

• Hallandsposten article (in Swedish)
• Museum of Halmstad