RIO DE JANEIRO - “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” sold more than 500.000 copies in Brazil since its release. This number will apparently increase more, as EMI Brazil will be re-releasing the album with a new cover.

  While the track listing of the CD will remain the same, the new cover - all in red - will say “Roxette - Limited Edition.”

Eleven years ago this week, Roxette’s “Joyride” ascended to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The chart topping single was the group’s fourth #1, following “The Look,” “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love.”

  To commemorate the occasion, Billboardradio.com has included “Joyride” in its weekly streaming audio feed. The song comes about 15 to 20 minutes into the countdown.

• Billboardradio.com

STUTTGART - The weekly newspaper Stuttgarter Stadtanzeiger has a big story about Roxette’s appereance at Nokia ’Night of the Proms’ in this week’s edition (based on the organizer’s press release). You can read the scanned article – in German – at http://www.music-centre.de

News story in Hallandsposten, later confirmed to Official Fanclub’s roxettenews.com by Roxette’s management, reveals that the band is working on a Greatest Hits album with a couple of new tracks. New songs may be released even as soon as this spring, but some releases will have to wait until autumn.

  According to Per, an entirely new album will not be released in this situation as there is “a lot of turmoil at the record company.” We reported earlier that Roxette’s record company EMI cut 1,800 jobs in March this year.

• Roxettenews.com article

STOCKHOLM - Fashion model turned jewelery designer Efva Attling celebrated her 50th birthday party yesterday evening, and among the 250 or so guests were Per and his wife Åsa. There’s a small picture of the Gessles arriving at the party on the Aftonbladet site.

  Efva and her partner, singer Eva Dalhgren, are Sweden’s most famous lesbian couple. They are very good friends of Marie Fredriksson, who is believed to have also attended the party with her husband.

• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish)
• Dahlgren-Attling.net

STOCKHOLM - Roxette won a special award at the Swedish Grammis gala this evening… a governmental export prize. Marie was there and accepted the award.

NEW YORK - One of the arguments used in the campaign to save the T&A studio from demolition, was that the Halmstad/Halland area needed to understand that Roxette fans from around the world help boost the economy there by visiting the various “Roxsites.” Apparently, the Swedish Travel & Tourism Council here agrees.

  In the 2002 edition of their travel brochure, “A Taste of Sweden,” Roxette is mentioned on three separate pages.

  The table of contents page includes a photo of Roxette (along with two other photos not shown here) to help identify the “South Sweden” section. Then, in the introduction, they write “Nobel, Bergman, ABBA, IKEA, Roxette, Pippi Longstocking, Volvo, SAAB, Ericsson, Greta Garbo and Björn Borg – all have played their part in giving Sweden its strong profile on the world scene.”

  And on page 8: “…It’s a favorite area for golfers, and Tylösand is reckoned to be among the best of the many courses. Halland is also the home region of the top rock group Roxette.”

STOCKHOLM - While Roxette was nominated in the Swedish Group-of-the-Year category, the golden “Rockbjörn” (Rock Bear) statuette was awarded to Lambretta, a group that has done very well on the dance/pop charts this past year, in ceremonies at the Cirkus theatre in Skansen.
Read more…

STOCKHOLM - Roxette will release another ’Greatest Hits’ album in June… or maybe even two. “We don’t know yet,” said Li Eriksson at EMI. As an enticement, the album will include two or three new songs along with the big hits.

  The thought is to precede the album(s) release with a single in May. Per thinks this it’s going to be a hit.

  “I feel it in my gut when I’m working with a song if it’s going to be a hit or not. But the most important thing is that it’s fun to work,” he said.

STOCKHOLM (UPDATED) - Per and Marie were called onto the stage at the NRJ Nordic Radio Awards three times tonight to be presented with trophies. Roxette received awards for “Best Nordic Artist,” “Best Swedish Group, ” and “Best Nordic Song.”

  Roxette and Titiyo where the artists that had the most nominations – four each – one in each of the categories they qualified for.
  The award show was presented in Hovet, a multi-purpose arena next to the Globe.

• Expressen’s article (In Swedish)
• Aftonbladet’s article (In Swedish, with focus on Kylie Minogue)