Yesterday’s Ilta-Sanomat told that Roxette is going to perform at Miss Finland gala on February 14. EMI Finland has confirmed this, but they didn’t give any further details yet.

I was also told that “Wish I Could Fly” was played on Radiomafia on Monday, for the very first time in Finland.

I have just received a press release from EMI. As usually, this release tries to be a humorous conversation between Marie and Per. Read it and judge yourself if it’s funny or not… :-)

In the end of the press release is “Have A Nice Day” Track by track which means Marie and Per talking about the album tracks.

Here’s also a bigger version of Roxette Recordings logo.

About 400 European musicians, including Roxette, Robbie Williams, Aqua, Boyzone and The Corrs, have signed a petition for better copyright laws. With this they are trying to end piracy of music recordings on the Internet. The petition was given to the European Parliament today. Next month EU is considering the new copyright directive.

Here’s again a couple of new Roxette banners found on Swedish web sites.

Gessle Music AB, Gessle Records AB, Music For Money AB and Jimmy Fun Music AB have all registered .com domains this week. The contact person of gessle.com, gesslerecords.com, musicformoney.com and jimmyfunmusic.com is Lena Beime of Desert AB. Desert AB handles the administration of Roxette.

The domain gabrielgessle.com has been registered for Per Gessle/Music For Money.

Gessle Music AB has also registered the Swedish domain gessles.se. Music For Money AB owns the domain mfm.se.

On Tuesday Per got an email from his wife Åsa. The message told that he should get ready for a trip abroad. Per got in his car and he was taken to the harbour. A boat took Per, Åsa and their son Gabriel to Copenhagen where they celebrated for a night. From Copenhagen they continued to Paris. All this in two days!

Yesterday a big party was held in Hotel Tylösand, Halmstad. The party was arranged by Åsa with a little help from the music video director Jonas Åkerlund. About 150 people were invited; Marie, Eva Dahlgren, ex-Abba Björn Ulvaeus, Niklas Strömstedt… “But this isn’t a party for celebs”, says Per. “I have invited just good friends of mine.”

Per got plenty of gifts from fans. “Everything from dolls for Gabriel to boxes of chocolate, crackers and wine and books… You name it, I got it. One fan even bought me ten trees in a rain forest”, tells Per. “The dolls I of course give to Gabriel, the chocolate I eat myself… unfortunately.”

Aftonbladet asked Per to name the biggest events in his life. “[The biggest event] was surely when Kjell Andersson from EMI Svenska called me and offered us a record deal in January 1979. It was exactly 20 years ago. Since then Roxette has been like a long silk scarf. One of the biggest memories is when we played for 60000 people at a football stadium in São Paulo. And of course the day Gabriel was born.”

• Aftonbladet’s Swedish article

Here’s the track listing that should be the real thing. This is taken from the EMI’s internal advance listening CD.

1. Crush On You
   
2. Wish I Could Fly
   
3. Youcantputyourarmsaroundwhatsalreadygone
   
4. Waiting For The Rain
   
5. Anyone
   
6. It Will Take A Long Long Time
   
7. 7twenty7
   
8. I Was So Lucky
   
9. Stars
   
10. Salvation
    
11. Pay The Price
    
12. Cooper
    
13. Staring At The Ground
    
14. Beautiful Things
    

Notice that the order of the songs is different. “Star” has now been changed to “Stars” and “It Will Take A Long Time” to “It Will Take A Long Long Time”. The correct form of “Beautiful Thing” is “Beautiful Things”.

Aftonbladet didn’t like “Wish I Could Fly” in its review, but Expressen’s Måns Ivarsson does. He likes Per’s “clever pop a lot”. “The sound is bold and even fantastic, dominated by a leaden bass against the sometimes severe, sometimes terrible strings. Roxette has never sounded this before (even though the chorus sounds familiar).”

“I don’t know if Steve Earle fans listen to Roxette, but the two minutes with the guitar and the strings have an exact ’quotation’ from the Earle song ’The other kind’. Cool.”

Expressen gives three bees to “Wish I Could Fly”.

Jan-Owe Wikström has written a large interview of Per Gessle to Hallandsposten, the local newspaper of Halmstad region.

Per tells: “If we would have had children when our house [Villa Gessle in Halmstad] was being built, we would have done many things different. Now there are dangers in every stairway, hideout and hard floor. But we prefered architecture to functionality and that’s why the house is a bit delicate.” Gabriel comes and plays with a miniature motorcycle. Per grabs it away from him, places it on the top of a shelf and says: “That one you shouldn’t take.” It appears that the motorcycle is a fully functional toy from the year 1910!

Villa Gessle is rounded with a high brick wall. “Of course it’s annoying. But without it you couldn’t relax - and you have to remember Gabriel. He has to have a life of his own and that’s why we have avoided publicity and pictures of him. But sure, it is going to be harder when he gets older. And he does appear on the new ’Wish I Could Fly’ video.”

As we all know, Per owns several companies. How well does he operate each of them? “I’m more like a generator who starts projects, but I need Janne Beime and other skilled people to put them into practice. It’s the same in music. I need a Marie [Fredriksson], an MP [Mats Persson] and a Clarence [Öfwerman] to take me where I want to.”

Per’s birthday party is going to be held in Hotel Tylösand on Saturday. “I know most of it [the programme], but not all. I believe so.”

The new Roxette album is going to make Per busy in doing PR work. “Yeah, it’s going to be fun to give interviews again. I haven’t given them for a long time and I’m really looking forward to it. But ask about this in May and I perhaps answer differently.”

I found yet another Roxette banner. This one was at Passagen and it was linked to www.haveaniceday.nu just like the others.