SÖDERHAMN - As you may and may not know, roxette.se and sister sites have been down since Saturday. TDR has spoken with the site administrator David J. Elfström Lilja who rips his hair in frustration. The sites are down due to technical issues that seem to be hard to solve.

  David lets TDR know that the demo, “One Wish,” promised to be online early this morning is now up on Per Gessle’s myspace account. This is temporary, but Roxette wants to show the fans that they won’t go back on the promise. The demo is from May 20.

• Gessle’s space

NEW YORK/BUENOS AIRES - Most anniversaries are rather private celebrations, but when Per and Marie announced they were getting back together again for Roxette’s 20th anniversary… fans around the world wanted to join the party.

  In the first of several special surprises The Daily Roxette has planned for the Rox20 party, that go beyond the articles and interviews that you are accustomed to seeing here, TDR is pleased to present a Flash-based video feature for Roxette’s new single “One Wish.”

  “Of course our idea in producing this was to pay tribute to Roxette’s 20 years together,” says Managing Editor Lars-Erik Olson, “but it was also our idea to somehow show that fans are invited guests to this party as well. Marie recently pointed out the role that fans have played in their career, and almost from the very beginning of this project, we were hoping to find a way to honor (by letting one fan represent a thousand fans) our loyal readers – and Roxette fans in general – with this video.”

  Produced and directed by Jorge Diaz and Lars-Erik Olson… The Daily Roxette is proud to salute Roxette with another look at “One Wish!”


NOTE: If the progress bar “freezes” at 82%… please just wait it out… it will, after a short wait, continue to load.

• TDR’s “One Wish” video (Link for Europe)
• TDR’s “One Wish” video (Worldwide link)

Read more…

LJUSDAL - So finally it is here, the mystical, mythical and long spoken about RoxBox – full name: The RoxBox - Roxette 86-06. I have it in my hand, it is a hefty piece, very well manufactured. The box contains four fully-crammed CDs, a thick, attached booklet and a DVD of "all Roxette's videos" (which certainly can be debated…) and the legendary MTV Unplugged show from 1993, in full!
Let's start with the box itself. It's made like a book, with the four CDs attached two to each cover, with a very lovely booklet in-between. So where is the DVD? It's in a cardboard sleeve at the very back of the booklet. Not a good place to put it, I would say, as the DVD is double-sided and DVDs are easily scratched. The booklet is written by well-known reporter Janne Gradvall, who has a definite stamp-of-approval from Per. Gradvall is a Swedish pop journalist with a long and genuine background, respected by many of Sweden's pop stars and music business people. The text has been translated by Sven Åke Peterson. The text itself is very informative and has tons of bits and pieces of nice Roxette trivia. I also like the translation, most of it at least. What is a "dropping-bottle" really? I would call that a "drip" or "drip-feed," but hey, that's me! The photos in the booklet are both familiar and unfamiliar, all in truly nice quality. What I miss in the booklet is an explanation from Per and Marie why they selected the tracks that made the box.
Now we get to the DVD(s) and unfortunately I can't say that I'm overjoyed about them. I say "them" because in reality there's two. The disc is a "flipper" (two sided). Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely fabulous to finally get the missing tracks of the Unplugged concert. I'm glad that someone convinced MTV to let Roxette use them. But why, oh why, do it in this poor quality?? I'm sure the original Beta masters were used to render the DVD, but the Mbit/s is only 6.16 which is VERY poor (and it gets worse). The sound is available in both Dolby Digital and DTS stereo, which is fine, however the bonus tracks have plenty of audio clicks and glitches. That may come from the original source material though. Oh well, the Unplugged concert looks decent on a regular 29" TV, but is hard to view at all on a 42" plasma.
Regarding the "video" side of the DVD, it contains 37 Roxette videos, not all videos ever made. And frankly, I doubt we'll ever see that compilation. The bitrate of the video side is an appalling 3.57 Mbit per second! That, my friends, is about as low as you can go on a DVD. And it's quite noticable while watching; for instance in "She Doesn't Live Here Anymore," where the whole picture is pixelated most of the time. I can buy perhaps that the earlier videos have low quality sources, but this is way beyond that. It's not acceptable for a company to release the third lousy (quality-wise) video compilation in a row… Other companies release good DVDs all the time, why not EMI? Read more…

STOCKHOLM - Roxette’s new compilation on behalf the 20th Anniversary: “A Collection Of Roxette Hits! - Their 20 Greatest Songs!” debuts this week directly inside the Swedish album chart at #2.

  The “One Wish” single remains steady at #4 after three weeks on the singles chart.

• The Hit List (mostly in Swedish)

NEW YORK/BUENOS AIRES - As the celebration of Roxette’s 20 years together continues, this coming Monday is set to be a special day. Along with a previously unreleased demo being available to listen to on Roxette.se, an exclusive new “One Wish” animation, created for The Daily Roxette by Jorge Diaz and Lars-Erik Olson, will be premiered here on TDR.

  “Originally, we were planning to ask permission to co-premiere the new single on TDR and we needed a simple Flash video to house the music stream,” explains Managing Editor Lars-Erik Olson. “Of course all of us on the staff have been excited about Marie and Per reuniting for Rox20, and we’ve had various special projects planned for some time now.

  “Our readers have seen our exclusive Rox20 features and interviews, and there are surprises like this yet to come. This video animation, which grew into a much bigger project than what we had first planned is, hopefully, just one of these special projects that our readers will enjoy.”

  “We had already started when the Åkerlund video came out,” he continues, “and of course we loved it. This is not at all – as with discussions about cover art in the past – a situation of thinking that we could come up with a better idea. They are two very different types of productions (full-motion video vs. Flash animation), with two very different budgets.”

  We asked Jorge, who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to give us some insight on the project:

  “Well, the first thing that came to my mind was to showcase all of Roxette’s career, but we understood that Jonas was also going to do this in his video… so Lars came up with the idea to make a ’daydreamer’ video. We spent a lot of time trying to find the right direction, and ended up with this lyric-based idea.

  “It took about two months… we spent a lot of time working on it. We previously worked together on a TDR video for Peter Jöback’s version of Per’s ’Varmt Igen,’ and knew that we wanted to do something like that again as soon as we found out that there would be new songs.

  “’One Wish’ is a great song! It has a lot of power and Marie’s part is amazing. Lars and I wanted to take advantage of the strong downbeats, and I think it’ll be a long time now before I can hear the song without counting off ’1, 2, 3, 4… 1, 2, 3, 4…’ in my head!”

HAMBURG - An Internet site based in Austria, along with a German online retailer, have listed a “Roxette - Live in Concert” DVD (German version) reportedly due to be released in June 2007 by Black Hill Pictures GmbH.

  Reached at his office in Hamburg, Andreas Dautzenberg, the managing director of Black Hill Pictures, tells The Daily Roxette that “this must be a mistake. This is not on our release schedule and we are not in negotiations with Roxette.”

  Black Hill releases about 80 titles a year, of which 25 percent are music videos.

• Geizhals’s Roxette DVD page
• Computer Universe’s page

STOCKHOLM - The following message has just been published on Roxette’s official website, Roxette.se:

You don’t like Mondays???

Well, Roxette certainly do!

Starting Monday October 30 (and continuing until Xmas) Roxette.se will give you the opportunity to listen to some extremely rare Roxette demos, straight from Señor Gessle’s hidden vaults.

Every Monday we will bring you a new special track, never before released. And yes, they’re all in stereo and no, you can’t download them, only listen to them.

Enjoy!


P&M

NEW YORK (UPDATED) - Satellite radio station Sirius will be free to listen to all over the world on October 25 and 26 with stars from around the world participating in the free global radio event.

  Per Gessle, who has a regular weekly show called Nordic Rox on The Spectrum (channel 18), will be a guest DJ on Big ’80s (channel 8) where original MTV VJs – and current Sirius DJs – Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn will share their biggest ’80s moments. Another Swede, Ace of Base’s Ulf Ekberg, will guest DJ on The Pulse (channel 9).

  Special editions of Nordic Rox, including an exclusive interview with Roxette’s Per Gessle by original MTV VJ Mark Goodman, and interviews with ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and the Hives’ Pelle Almquist will be aired on The Spectrum (channel 18).

  Nordic Rox is on Wednesday between 12.00-15.00 CET.
To be able to listen you have to register.

  Sirius has more than 75 channels of talk, entertainment, sports and commercial-free music and is launching the internet service for $12.95 a month.

  Update: Per Gessle’s shows will be re-run tomorrow, Thursday. Interview at 13.00 CET and his show at 18.00.



Ron Wienand contributed to this article.

• Register here
• Nordic Rox info page

NEW YORK - Capitol Records, part of the EMI group, will be releasing Roxette material in the United States this holiday season. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Roxette that appears on our Features page, Per provides details about this new U.S. record deal and opens the door even wider to the possibility of new Roxette music in the near future.

  Per speaks candidly with TDR News Editor Thomas Evensson about a number of other topics of interest to our readers in this interview, including Per’s take on life: “I like to keep my head busy,” he says.

  Along with this exclusive interview, you’ll also find a first-person account of the appearance of Roxette at Bravo Magazine’s gala anniversary event in Hamburg, Germany this past weekend. Written by TDR reporter Kirsten Ohlwein, the story takes you behind the scenes into the press room, where it was obvious that Roxette’s perfomance was the most anticipated event of the evening.

STOCKHOLM - With Roxette’s 20th Anniversary celebration really picking up steam, Per Gessle is on the road a lot these days, going from Stockholm to New York to Hamburg… with more travel plans in the works. Back home for the moment, he’s agreed to spend some time with The Daily Roxette. As always, we’re full of questions, and we know that this time together is limited, so we dive right in:

  Gyllene Tider is put on ice “forever,” Son of a Plumber is hard to beat in terms of quality, Roxette seems to take a lot of energy from Marie and reports are telling us that you are writing a book about your life. Will we see Per Gessle lying in a hammock on a sunny beach for the rest of his life? Can you tell us about your “secret” plans for 2007 that you hinted at on TV4?

  Yes, there is an authorized book coming out in, I guess, September next year. Sven Lindström is doing all the hard work, I’m just playing the leading role.

  I would love to do another SOAP album some day and yes, there might be some more Rox music in the future. Beyond that, sorry, but I can’t reveal anything [more right now]. But the hammock sounds nice… sunny beach even nicer…

  After having had a few stage appearances with Roxette over the last few weeks, you might be able to forecast how the near future of Roxette – especially regarding Marie’s situation – may look like. Will there be more Roxette in 2007 or will we have to wait until Rox25 for more hits? What options do you see at the moment?

  Same answer as before. I’m working on new things, new songs, new everything like I always do. I like to keep my head busy.

  You once mentioned that with the Mazarin tour you discovered the joy of such concerts. Do you feel like going on a huge tour again in the future? Let it be solo or with Rox or…

  Yes, I’m sure there will be more tours in the future. I like playing and singing my songs. I like getting the reaction I usually get from the audience. It’s hard to beat. It’s like a great go-cart lap. Read more…

HAMBURG - The first thing this reporter notices, when I arrive at the Color Line Arena in Hamburg the day before the Bravo gala on Saturday, is a group of Tokio Hotel fans.

  “For whom did you come?” asks one of the girls. She isn’t much older than 15 and fixes her makeup every three minutes. “Roxette,” I say and her reply is clear: “Who?”

  It continues like that the whole day, as fans hope to for a chance to see the various groups arrive for soundcheck and technical rehearsals. Nobody’s there for Roxette.

  It’s the same thing on Saturday. About four hours before the show starts, the Tokio Hotel fans are screaming their lungs out and waiting for their heros to appear on the red carpet. At first I too am waiting behind a barrier with my friends before planning to enter the arena through the press entrance. There’s no possibility to actually see the red carpet, but we do see the black Bravo cars labeled “Cars for Stars.” The crowd of people outside – more than 75% are younger than 16 – are simply hysterical, even though hardly anyone can see anything happening on the red carpet. You couldn’t even see that there’s somebody in a car. But luck is with us this time. My friends do see Marie before the show starts.

  At about 5:45 pm Roxette step onto the red carpet. Per, Marie and the band… far away from us. But for Marie, it was only to make her entrance, as only ten minutes later she is sitting in a small car, driving back to the hotel again with manager Marie Dimberg at her side (only to drive back to the venue again two hours later). It’s luck because they need to stop right behind a big barricade to get on the street. Marie sees one of the posters my friend had made, which greets her with the words “Welcome back Marie”. She looks at it for quite a long time, smiles and then she’s gone.

  At 8:45 pm the show has already been going for about two hours. In the press area, everybody’s talking about Marie… not Tokio Hotel. It’s obvious that in the eyes of the press, she is THE star of the evening, and it’s a foretaste of what one of the biggest German Sunday newspapers, Bild am Sonntag, will be writing the next day about her: “Roxette star sings herself back into [people’s] hearts.”

  Working meticulously, the photographers sort through the pictures they took of Roxette on the red carpet and are waiting for the performance and asking wondering amongst themselves how it will be. As a press reporter myself, I had the schedule and knew that it won’t be too much longer, so I quickly decide to go back to my seat in the hall. I know that they will play on the left stage and I too wait with anticipation. Afterwards my friends – who are sitting everywhere and nowhere in the hall – tell me that they could see when Marie and Per stepped on the stage and thought that they recognized that both of them were quite nervous. The only thing I notice after host Kai Pflaume has welcomed Roxette, is that the audience is suddenly getting louder.

  The audience jumps to their feet only a few seconds after the intro of “The Look” has started. Everyone seems to begin clapping to the beat and the performance becomes one of the few highlights of the evening. Now the mood is much better than it was all through the last two hours. It’s amazing! And Marie especially seems to notice it. Boldly, she finally conquers the whole stage. Even the celebrities in the front rows stand up as the music fades away and they too are clapping their hands.

  Directly after the Roxette performance I leave the hall. In front of the entrance, I meet the Tokio Hotel girl that I had met the day before. She runs over to me happily and says “Marie is her name, right? The female singer of Roxette? I DO know her. She has short blonde hair and an amazing voice.” Somehow she’s had this epiphany even though she didn’t have a ticket for the show and therefore missed seeing the fabulous live comeback of Roxette. Read more…

LONDON - Roxette entered the UK Top 40 album chart at #22 with new album “Hits!” this week, ahead of acts like Evanescence and Chris Rea.

  This is Roxette’s 8th album to hit the UK top 40; “The Ballad Hits” being their last back in February 2003 and the first being “Look Sharp!” (which entered at #4) way back in 1990 .


Animalkingdom contributed to this article.

• BBC Chart

STOCKHOLM - Both Aftonbladet and Expressen give the “Rox Box” three out of five, but not without reservations. Expressen’s Anders Nunstedt misses the version of “The Look” where Marie sings, and also the demo of “Svarta glas” that later became “Neverending Love,” while Aftonbladet’s Markus Larsson thinks the box is too much. Markus claims that about two and a half CD is “the rest” and is just filling and bad repeats.

  On the other hand Markus thinks that Marie’s voice is “damned great” and Per was a formidable hit machine during Roxette’s heydays. Both Markus Larsson and Anders Nunstedt feel that Roxette was the best between ’86-’92 (Larsson) or ’89-’91 (Nunstedt) and that Roxette can claim it was mismanaged as much as it wants, as the booklet does state. They both disagree with that.

  Nunstedt concludes that the box summarizes Roxette in a loving, well-made and generous way. “Roxette was great and really terrible.” Markus Larsson says that “Listen to Your Heart” is the best track and that Roxette made pop music that is way up there with what ABBA and the Ramones did.

  Additionally, Nunstedt gives “Hits” two stingers. He writes “On the album ’Have a Nice Day’ (1999) you hear a band that’s lost its compass. You don’t have to listen very carefully to ’Room Service’ (2001) to hear the sound of a duo that’s been lost in the woods so long that the search has ended.” He mentions that the point of this album is its first half, with songs like “It Must Have Been Love” and “Spending My Time.” He disagrees with the subtitle “Their 20 greatest songs” but can count at least eight of them.

• Aftonbladet’s review (In Swedish)
• Expressen’s “Hits” review (In Swedish. The “Box” review is not online.)

STOCKHOLM - According to TV4.se’s recent vote Roxette’s Best Video Ever is “Listen to Your Heart.” After a week of selecting finalists, 586 voters selected “Listen to Your Heart” as the final winner with more than 30% of the votes.

  The video for “Listen to Your Heart” was recorded at Borgholm castle ruin and directed by Doug Freel (“Dangerous,” “It Must Have Been Love,” “Joyride,” “Fading Like a Flower”). When released in the US Americans thought Roxette had had the castle ruin built just for the video’s sake…

  Roxette paid for the video themselves and it was recorded at the same time as the video for “Dangerous.” Marie was barefoot in the video, which resulted in her getting tons of shoes sent to her. And finally; the segment when the audience is holding sparklers in the video was recorded during “It Must Have Been Love.”

• TV4.se
• Doug Freel’s work

According to online Portuguese CD retail stores, it has been confirmed that due to delays, the new Roxette compilation and its 2CD (CD with DVD) will only be released on October 23 all over the country. It seems that the normal edition has arrived, yet it will not be on sale until the arrival of the deluxe edition. However, it was expected to be released on October 16 simultaneoulsly with other European countries.

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - On TV4.se you can now vote for Roxette’s best video through all times. There will be three videos a day to choose from. Next Tuesday all six winners will be fighting for Best Roxette Video ever.



  October 11: “The Look,” “A Thing About You” and “Wish I Could Fly”

  October 12: “Listen to Your Heart,” “Almost Unreal” and “The Center of the Heart.”

  October 13: “It Must Have Been Love,” “Run to You” and “Crash!Boom!Bang!.”

  October 14: “Joyride,” “Milk & Toast & Honey” and “How Do You Do!.”

  October 15: “Fading Like a Flower,” “Dangerous” and “Stars.”

  October 16: “Spending My Time,” “Sleeping in My Car” and “Dressed for Success.”



OK, so now it’s time to choose the best Roxette video of all times. The selection must have been a bit random by TV4 as they have only showed 18 out of about 45 videos. Take it for what it’s worth. The finalists are in bold.

• Per & Marie’s greeting to TV4’s viewers (In Swedish)

This week Roxette’s new single rockets 20 places up from last week’s #24 to #4 on the Swedish Topp 40 (airplay/sales chart). Three weeks ago “One Wish” debuted at #26, the next week it climbed only two spots but this week it became the biggest climber. All these three weeks the #1 belongs to Scissors Sisters’s “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’.”

• Topp 40

Magic TV UK played the first showing of the new Roxette single “One Wish” today. Magic TV is a British music television station owned by EMAP who also owns Magic radio station. The video was played as part of a program called “Roxette - 10 steps through time.” The following videos were shown.

1 The Look

2 It Must Have Been Love

3 Listen to Your Heart

4 Dressed for Success

5 Joyride

6 Fading Like a Flower

7 Crash!Boom!Bang!

8 Almost Unreal

9 Wish I Could Fly

10 One Wish

  They also had facts and general comments running at the bottom of the screen. Examples: “Listen to Your Heart” has been played three million times in the US; if played back to back it would play for 27 years! They also mention that “It Must Have Been Love” is Roxette’s most successful single and was released twice in the UK; “Wish I Could Fly” was the most played song on radio in 1999 in Europe and that Roxette hasn’t entered the UK chart so far this century, and finally that “One Wish” may change that for them.

STOCKHOLM - 45 milllion albums later.

  Now Roxette starts over again. With a new style, new songs and a new Marie Fredriksson.

  “The lively Marie is gone. Of course she’s a different person today,” Per Gessle says.



By Anders Nunstedt, Expressen



  It’s 20 years ago this year that Roxette made its single debut in Sweden. The rest is pop history, now with a happy ending.

  It could have ended considerably worse. When Marie Fredriksson in the fall of 2002 was struck by a brain tumor, it was a shock not only for the Roxette singer but also for everyone close to her.



“It was scary”

  “It was scary. There are different grades of cancer and of course one lived in suspense. I don’t even think the chance was 50/50 for her to make it,” Per Gessle says.

  “It’s amazing that Marie has recovered. Now Roxette is back, even if on a different premise.

  Per Gessle, who has been amazingly productive during the 2000s, explains that the initiative to Roxette’s comeback came from Marie. “When the compilation became viable it was she who suggested that we should record a new song.”

  It became more than that. On the “Greatest Hits” record released on Wednesday there is, in addition to the single “One Wish,” the ballad “Reveal.”

  “Actually we haven’t discussed if we are going to do something more. I don’t know what I want to do. On the one hand it’s fun, of course, but I have no idea if there’s a point in continuing. It doesn’t feel so tempting to go on promotion trips and sing playback in Vienna, Hamburg and Madrid,” Gessle says.

  The question is also if Marie Fredriksson wants to, and can manage, a full commitment to Roxette.



“One reconsiders everything”

  “It’s naturally a different Marie today. When something like this happens one reconsiders everything. It doesn’t help how many gold records you have hanging on the wall when you get ill,” says Gessle.

  Per explains that “the singing voice is back at full strength, but there are other circumstances. She has a problem reading fast and trouble remembering things. Everything goes a little slower. Maybe it can be worked on, but it takes time.”

  Roxette’s participation in the “Världens barn” (Children of the World) gala tomorrow is a comeback against all odds.

  But there’s no doubt they’re back. “One Wish” immediately swooshed up to second place of the Swedish single chart and has also started to climb internationally.

  Today Per goes to New York to prepare Roxette’s upcoming U.S. release.

  “Who would’ve thought that,” Gessle says with a laugh. “Now we’re actually back, and have really no idea where it’s gonna end.”



English translation by Cecilia Isvén

• Expressen’s article (in Swedish - with photo of Per not shown here)

STOCKHOLM - “One Wish,” the new Roxette single, entered the official Swedish singles chart at the #2 position behind “7milakliv” from Martin Stenmarck.

  The Swedish singles chart is compiled from the sales of physical singles, radioplay and legal downloads (except iTunes).

  “One Wish” also entered the official Finnish singles chart at #5 this week. It is the first time Roxette’s enjoyed a top-5 hit in Finland since “Sleeping in My Car”. The last time they had a hit on the singles sales chart was with “The Centre Of The Heart,” which peaked at #13.

  The new single is #3 as a new entry in Spain as well.


animalkingdom contributed to this article.

• SwedishCharts.com
• FinnishCharts.com
• Media Control Spain (PDF)

SÖDERHAMN - According to Roxette.se there will be no Roxette tour “within a forseeable future,” but Swedish Radio P3 will in celebration of Roxette’s 20th anniversary broadcast a concert recorded during the Room Service tour in the Globen Arena in 2001. The concert starts at 21:03 CET October 20 and lasts one hour.

  This concert has been broadcast once before and consists of roughly a dozen songs:

01. Crush on You

02. Dressed for Success

03. Listen to Your Heart

04. Real Sugar

05. It Must Have Been Love

06. The Centre of the Heart

07. Sleeping in My Car

08. Milk & Toast & Honey

09. Joyride

10. Crash!Boom!Bang!/Anyone

11. The Look

• Roxette.se

HAMBURG - While Roxette’s actual performance will still be pre-recorded, Per and Marie are now both expected to take the stage this month at the Color Line Arena in Hamburg, Germany when Bravo magazine celebrates its 50th Anniversary with a live three-hour television event.

  A notice posted yesterday on Roxette.se, the duo’s own site, indicated that Roxette will “make a live appearance on stage at the actual event on the 21st.”

  And Bravo themselves yesterday released this message:

Dear Roxette-fans,
We have positive news! After intensive discussions, we have today received the definitive yes: Roxette will be on stage at the big ’50 Years BRAVO’ anniversary gala on 21 October 2006. We’re very happy to be able to bring all fans this news.

STOCKHOLM - Roxette turns 20 years and celebrates by releasing their greatest hits. But even if the album contains two new tracks,
the thought of a comeback is far away.

  “I take everything much, much slower these days,” Marie Fredriksson says.

  Talking to Roxette, who turns 20 and releases a compilation album is of course a dead straight stroll down memory lane. Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson dwell more than willingly on their memories of sold out arenas, chart positions and the superstar lives they lived during the early ’90s.

  “We sold a decent amount of records in South America, but nothing remarkable. Maybe 30,000 records in Brazil. But when we released tickets we sold 120,000 - just in Rio. 60,000 in Sao Paolo, 55,000 in Montevideo. Totally amazing!”
says Per Gessle.

  “China was special. Or Porto Alegre [Brazil],” says Marie Fredriksson in a noticeably quiet and a bit shaky voice.

  Per Gessle adds “It was like Albert Hall only much bigger. Someone in the band had the stomach flu and threw up on stage. That was fun. And after a TV interview in Amsterdam we saw a guy in a window yelling ’I love your record!’ It was Tom Petty, my old hero. ’We love your records too!’ we yelled back.”

  It’s easy to forget how big Roxette really was. During four years in the ’90s they never - never - left the Billboard chart. Roxette has sold around 75 million records. “It Must Have Been Love” has been played over four million times on American radio. It means it’s been played 685 times per day. For 16 years. Not bad for a band everyone considered a one hit wonder when it broke through with “The Look” in 1989.

  “That’s what everybody thought. But we weren’t in our twenties, we were almost in our thirties. We owned our own
publishing companies, we had chosen our management, we kept a check on things. When we got our foot into things, we hung on,” says Per Gessle.

  The comparison with ABBA they’ve heard a few times. But you can’t help it: a Swedish band selling enormous amounts of records all over the world. Loved by many but never favorites among the critics.

  TT Spektra: “ABBA went from being despised by the establishment to being embraced twenty years after their
debut. Will the same thing happen with Roxette?”

  “Yes I believe so. The climate of pop music is totally different today. Almost no artists get time to make mistakes anymore, it’s more of a product thinking these days. Suddenly Roxette stand out as the real deal. It’s for real, we write and produce ourselves and people know all our songs,” says Per Gessle.

  The last few years have been dramatic to Roxette. When Marie Fredriksson [was discovered to have] a brain tumor, many thought that was the end for her and for Roxette. Today she’s well, but still marked by her illness. She talks quietly and moves stiffly.

  “There was a time when I really didn’t think I’d be sitting like this and talking to reporters. But thank God I’m here again. But I take things much, much slower these days.”

  TT Spektra: “Do you really have the energy for this?”

  “I can manage, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But I take one week at the time. No long-term plans. Very slow and quiet. I have my family as well, so I don’t want to be rushing about,” Marie says.

  And by that, the question of a real comeback seems to be answered. To start long tours or record full albums doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.

  “It’s this album that is for now. A world tour would be nice, but I don’t think we will do it the way we used to do. Maybe a mini tour?” says Marie Fredriksson.

  Per Gessle can’t hold it in, he really has to tell another anecdote:

  “When I was in New York this summer and went through immigration, the officer asked me what I did for a living. ’Musician’ I answered. Then he wondered if he should know about me. ’Well, I wrote that’ I said, and pointed to the radio which was playing ’Listen to Your Heart’. That was fun.”


Judith Seuma, Marcus van Deursen and Txiqui contributed to this article.

LONDON (UPDATED) - BMI is once again giving awards to Per Gessle and Mats “MP” Persson as their song “Listen to Your Heart” has now reached its 3 millionth broadcast on American radio. It took nine years to reach two million – and eight years more to reach three million (total playing time non-stop: 27 years.) Recently, the pace was increased as D.H.T. released a succesful dance cover of the song. Per Gessle comments to Aftonbladet “This award means a lot to me as it clearly shows what an impact this song has had!”

  Per also mentions that the Americans were “duly impressed” by the video as they thought Roxette had built Borgholm’s Castle ruin just for the video.

Update Oct. 6: “Listen to Your Heart,” written by Per Gessle and Mats “MP” Persson, and published by Jimmy Fun Music (all STIM), was named Song of the Year and received one of the organization’s [BMI] highest accolades; the Robert S. Musel Award. “I’ve never heard of this Robert dude. The sculpture was very big and very ugly!” comments Per. He also tells TDR that he thinks this is an amazing award, “…the last and the best of the night!”

  Recorded by Belgium-based duo D.H.T., the song was originally a #1 hit for Roxette in 1989 and received the BMI Dance Award at last year’s ceremony.



Dan Kroll contributed to this article.

• BMI
• Aftonbladet (In Swedish)

VIENNA - German music channel VIVA will premiere “One Wish” video tonight in their program “NEU.” The program runs between 22:00 and 22:59 CEST and will be re-run on Saturday at 14:00 and Sunday at 09:00.


Sille-Rox contributed to this article.

• VIVA.tv

STOCKHOLM - A 44-year-old Swedish man is being prosecuted for illegally sharing thousands of music files on Direct Connect network. He’s the first person to appear in court for such activities in Sweden making this a test case for the Swedish copyright law.

  According to the music industry body IFPI, the accused has made 13,000 MP3 files available online. However, the prosecutor is focusing on just four songs: “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette, “There Must Be An Angel” by Eurythmics, “Sarah” by Mauro Scocco and “Vara vänner” by Jakob Hellman.

  The man claims that he intended to upload just a few individual songs to be shared, but instead uploaded his whole collection of songs. He believes the case against him is unfair. “It’s wrong to find someone guilty for something that millions of people do,” he told Borås Tidning.

• The Local article

BADEN-BADEN - Roxette’s brand new single “One Wish” entered the German radio station SWR3 TOP 33 charts at #2 last Sunday, and as such the highest entry last week.


  SWR3 is one of the most important stations in the south of Germany and the Top 33 chart is built weekly with the votes the radio station receives from listeners via the Internet.

• SWR3 Top 33 charts

MADRID - Promotion for Roxette’s new single “One Wish” has already started in Spain and, in fact, is in high gear at the moment.


  Commuters travelling to work this morning were greeted with a big, full-color Roxette picture on the cover of one of Spain’s most-read newspapers, the free 20 Minutos (which is distributed for free in a similar fashion to Metro in many countries or Heute in Austria).

  An article inside reports about Roxette’s new release and comeback, and invites readers to visit the newspaper’s website today and tomorrow to view the video version of Roxette’s new single “One Wish.”


  The newspaper is read by an average of two million people daily and can be picked up at subway stations and universities.


  The single also started to be heard on the main radio stations last week and, as some TDR readers have reported, was sold out in some stores.

• 20 Minutos article
• Today’s edition as PDF

STOCKHOLM - Roxette’s new single “One Wish” is the highest new entry this week on Sweden’s Topp 40 chart coming in at #26. “One Wish” also debuted at #17 on the Nielsen Radio Topp 20 chart.

  The last time Roxette was seen with a single on an airplay chart in Sweden was with “Opportunity Nox.”

• Sweden’s Official Top 40 page
• Nielsen Music Control’s radio airplay chart