Roxette

Roxette
Roxette Live, November 13th 2009 in Arnhem
General information
Genre (s)	Pop , rock
founding	1986
resolution	2016
Website	www.roxette.se
Last occupation
Vocals , guitar	Per Gessle
singing	Marie Fredriksson († 2019)

Roxette was a pop duo from Sweden founded in 1986 by Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson . With over 80 million records sold worldwide, Roxette is one of the most successful pop music bands of the 1980s and 1990s. The name "Roxette" is a reference to the title of a song by the English rock band Dr. Feel good .

The duo first achieved international fame in 1989 with the album Look Sharp! and was able to stay at the top of the worldwide charts for more than a decade. After Roxette only performed sporadically in 2002 due to the cancer of the singer Marie Fredriksson, they celebrated a successful comeback in 2011 with the multiple number one album Charm School and the accompanying world tour .

Marie Fredriksson died on December 9, 2019 of complications from her cancer.

Career

1989–2001: International breakthrough and heyday

Roxette with the musician Eva Dahlgren (center) in August 1987

Roxette was founded in 1986. The duo became internationally known in the spring of 1989 after the American student Dean Cushman had given a copy of the album Look Sharp , which he had bought during a vacation in Sweden, to a US radio station. This played the song The Look in Heavy Rotation , and so the song became a number one hit on the Billboard charts within a few weeks - without any publicity on the part of Roxette.

The band has had numerous top 10 successes worldwide since 1989, including the four US number 1 hits The Look , Listen to Your Heart (both 1989), It Must Have Been Love (1990, also known from the soundtrack for Film Pretty Woman ) and Joyride (1991). The singles Dangerous (1990) and Fading Like a Flower (1991) each took second place in the US charts. Roxette recorded a hit series in the US charts that only a few non-American artists managed.

In Europe, Australia, South America and Asia, Roxette had other top hits in addition to the songs mentioned above with Dressed for Success (1989), The Big L. (1991), Spending My Time (1991), How Do You Do! (1992), Almost Unreal (1993), Sleeping in My Car , Crash! Boom! Bang! (both 1994), You Don't Understand Me (1995), Wish I Could Fly (1999) and the song Stars (1999), which is rather untypical for Roxette .

The Swedish pop duo also wrote a number of songs that were medium-sized commercially, but dominated the radio charts and became very popular. These include Church of Your Heart , Queen of Rain (both 1992), Fireworks (1994), Run to You, Vulnerable (both 1995), June Afternoon (1996), The Center of the Heart (Is a Suburb to the Brain) , Milk and Toast and Honey (both 2001) and A Thing About You (2002).

Roxette as part of the room service tour on October 24, 2001 in Palau Sant Jordi

Roxette's songs are mostly based on catchy melodies that are presented in a guitar-driven rock or pop style. Powerful ballads were often released as singles, alternating with cool up-tempo songs. These circumstances also contributed to the fact that Roxette always enjoyed great popularity with radio stations and that both new and old hits are still broadcast at high frequencies today. In the new millennium, for example, the classics Listen to Your Heart and It Must Have Been Love received BMI Awards for over four million broadcasts in the USA alone.

Her albums were even more successful than Roxette's singles. Look Sharp! (1989) and Joyride (1991) are among the most successful European albums of their decade with ten and twelve million copies sold respectively. Although Roxette's single sales gradually declined from the mid-1990s, her albums still landed high in the charts and were awarded precious metal.

Roxette's first world tour took place in 1991/92 after the release of the album Joyride . 1.7 million spectators attended the 107 concerts on the Join-the-Joyride tour. As one of the few pop bands they were allowed to go on their second world tour, which took place in 1994 and 1995 under the name Crash! Boom! Live! took place to play in China and Moscow. Your room service tour in 2001 was limited to Europe. Concerts planned for the end of 2001 in South Africa were canceled after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 . The final concert of the Room Service Tour 2001 in Gothenburg was considered the last live concert of the band for several years.

2002–2008: break and compilations

Roxette paused for a long time because Marie Fredriksson had a brain tumor. She made her first public appearance after her illness in the spring of 2003, when she and Per Gessle received a medal of honor for special merits from the Swedish royal couple. At the end of 2005 she accompanied Per Gessle to the BMI Songwriter Awards in London. Shortly afterwards, Fredriksson's first public live performance after a three-year break from the stage followed in Stockholm's Café Opera .

In June 2006, after a four-year hiatus, Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle made studio recordings of two new songs for the Greatest Hits album planned for Roxette's 20th anniversary in autumn 2006. The first joint stage appearance after Fredriksson's illness took place on October 21, 2006 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Bravo magazine .

2009–2016: Comeback and second career spring

Roxette on May 6, 2009 in Amsterdam

Roxette on August 14, 2010 during a concert in Halmstad

In May 2009 the band announced their comeback as part of the Night of the Proms ; Days before, Marie Fredriksson had performed two songs as a surprise guest on Pers Party Crasher Tour in Amsterdam (May 6th) and Stockholm (May 10th, 2009). After that, Roxette had her first official appearance in July 2009 at the New Wave Festival in Latvia. In autumn 2009, she performed 42 gigs in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands with the Nokia Night of the Proms in front of a total of over 600,000 spectators.

On October 2nd, 2009, all seven Roxette studio albums were re-edited as re-releases . They each contain up to three bonus tracks .

On June 18, 2010, Roxette performed her song The Look at a gala concert on the eve of the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and Daniel Westling . The duo also performed six songs in camera at the wedding ceremony on June 19. In August and September 2010 another six concerts followed in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Russia. At the concert on August 14, 2010 on Marknadtsplatsen in Halmstad, Roxette gave a concert in front of around 20,500 visitors, at which the pop group Gyllene Tider also made a surprise appearance. Concert dates for a world tour planned for 2011 were released on November 3, 2010.

On December 31, 2010, Roxette performed together with other artists in Warsaw at the New Year's Eve party on Plac Konstytucji.

On January 10, 2011, the single She's Got Nothing On (But the Radio) was released, on the B-side is Wish I Could Fly in a live recording from St. Petersburg . The release reached number ten in the German charts. The album Charm School was released on February 11, 2011 and went straight to number one in the German charts. Roxette's longest world tour to date began on February 28, 2011 in Kazan, Russia , which took her to all six continents and ended on September 19, 2012 in Mexico City .

On July 3, 2011, Gessle confirmed that he would work on another new studio album à la Tourism , with the appropriate working title 2rism , during the world tour .

On January 31, 2012 it was announced on the band's homepage that the new album was called Traveling and would be released on March 23, 2012. The pre-single It's Possible had its radio premiere on March 2nd and was released on CD on March 16th.

After the pre-single It Just Happens in April 2016, the tenth studio album Good Karma was released on June 3, 2016 .

Tour for the band's 30th anniversary

Patrick Woodroffe created the lighting design on their tour for the band's 30th anniversary. Because of the after-effects of her cancer, Marie Fredriksson completed the tour sitting down. After their concert in Munich's Olympiahalle in July 2015, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote : “The critics have always been strict with Roxette, but these days even the strictest are running out of comparisons: Who can still compete with hits in this number of times, with such catchy melodies of brilliant accuracy? ... When you talk about good pop music, Roxette has set the bar. "

End of the live concerts

The doctors treating Marie Fredriksson strongly advised her in April 2016 not to go on tour in the future. Therefore Roxette had to cancel all concerts already planned. The last joint live concert by Fredriksson and Gessle took place on February 8, 2016 in Cape Town, South Africa. The singer died in 2019.

Discography

→ Main article : Roxette / Discography

Studio albums

year	Title music label	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, music label , placements, weeks, awards, notes)						Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US	SE
1986	Pearls of Passion EMI	-	-	-	-	-	SE2 (13 weeks) SE	First published: October 31, 1986 Sales: + 800,000
1988	Look Sharp! EMI	DE7th × 2 Double platinum (97 weeks)DE	AT3 × 2 Double platinum (56 weeks)AT	CH4th × 4 Quadruple platinum (28 weeks)CH	UK4th platinum (53 weeks)UK	US23 platinum (71 weeks)US	SE1 × 3 Triple platinum (21 weeks)SE	First published: October 19, 1988 Sales: + 9,000,000
1991	Joyride EMI	DE1 × 7 Sevenfold gold (86 weeks)DE	AT1 × 3 Triple platinum (28 weeks)AT	CH2 × 4 Quadruple platinum (47 weeks)CH	UK2 × 2 Double platinum (48 weeks)UK	US12 platinum (56 weeks)US	SE1 platinum (14 weeks)SE	First published: March 28, 1991 Sales: + 11,000,000
1992	Tourism EMI	DE1 × 3 Triple gold (36 weeks)DE	AT2 platinum (16 weeks)AT	CH1 platinum (24 weeks)CH	UK2 gold (17 weeks)UK	US117 (8 weeks) US	SE1 platinum (10 weeks)SE	First published: August 28, 1992 Sales: + 6,000,000
1994	Crash! Boom! Bang! EMI	DE2 platinum (40 weeks)DE	AT3 platinum (26 weeks)AT	CH1 platinum (27 weeks)CH	UK3 gold (16 weeks)UK	-	SE1 platinum (26 weeks)SE	First published: April 9, 1994 Sales: + 5,000,000
1999	Have a Nice Day EMI / Roxette Recordings	DE2 gold (33 weeks)DE	AT3 gold (12 weeks)AT	CH2 platinum (16 weeks)CH	UK28 (1 week) UK	-	SE1 platinum (32 weeks)SE	First published: February 17, 1999 Sales: + 2,200,000
2001	Room Service EMI / Roxette Recordings	DE3 gold (35 weeks)DE	AT4 (11 weeks) AT	CH2 gold (17 weeks)CH	-	-	SE1 platinum (23 weeks)SE	First published: April 2, 2001 Sales: +323,394
2011	Charm School Capitol Records / Roxette Recordings	DE1 gold (25 weeks)DE	AT2 (13 weeks) AT	CH1 gold (28 weeks)CH	-	-	SE2 gold (15 weeks)SE	First published: February 11, 2011 Sales: + 500,000
2012	Traveling Capitol Records / Roxette Recordings	DE7 (7 weeks) DE	AT15 (4 weeks) AT	CH12 (9 weeks) CH	-	-	SE7th gold (11 weeks)SE	First published: March 23, 2012 Sales: + 20,000
2016	Good Karma Capitol Records / Roxette Recordings	DE11 (10 weeks) DE	AT10 (5 weeks) AT	CH2 (12 weeks) CH	UK61 (1 week) UK	-	SE2 (6 weeks) SE	First published: June 3, 2016

Web links

Commons : Roxette  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (English)
• Planet Roxette , comprehensive fansite (German)
• The Daily Roxette , Newssite (English)
• RoxetteBlog , News and Blog (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson is dead. Tagesschau.de, December 10, 2019, accessed on December 11, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US SE
3. ↑ Press release from Dimberg Jernberg Management .
4. ↑ Youtube video of the performance: Roxette - "The Look" live @ Det Kungliga Bröllopet 2010 - Festföreställning Konserthuset , June 19, 2010.
5. ↑ Review Halmstad Concert [1] , August 15, 2010
6. ↑ www.roxette.se
7. ↑ roxette.se ( Memento of the original from August 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , January 31, 2011. 
8. ↑ expressen.se ( Memento of the original from July 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Roxette is working on new album , Thomas Evensson, The Daily Roxette, July 3, 2011
10. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ↑ The new single is “It's Possible,” Thomas Evensson, The Daily Roxette, February 29, 2012
13. ↑ http://www.mopo.de/musik---partys/roxette-gitarrist--per-gessle---unsere-karriere-war-nur-zufall-,28041504,31016968.html
14. ↑ Roman Deininger, Max Hägler: Thousands sing for Marie. Süddeutsche.de, July 8, 2015, accessed on March 12, 2016 . 
15. ↑ roxette.se: Roxette cancel their summer tour ( Memento from April 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
16. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Sales figures for Roxette at expressen.se ( Memento from June 5, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
17. ↑ Yearbook of 2011 ( Memento from February 19, 2012 on WebCite )