Roxette - Pop-rock for broken hearts

Never is a long time, goodbye

no answers for the asking,

It’s a long time, goodbye

no mercy for the aching

The sad news of Marie Fredriksson's death at just 61 years old, which occurred on December 9, 2019, left a bitter taste and plenty of broken hearts, but it didn't catch her most attentive fans entirely off guard. The iconic voice of Roxette passed away after a grueling battle with cancer that had begun roughly seventeen years earlier, following an accidental fall in the bathroom of her own home — an episode in which she violently struck her head on the floor, suffering permanent brain damage and losing part of the sight in her right eye along with mobility on that side of her body, as well as the ability to read and count. Not, however, the ability to sing: rushed immediately to hospital by her husband, she underwent several rounds of radiotherapy and chemotherapy that gradually restored some basic functions, slowly bringing her back to life. Having survived that fateful September 11, 2002, Marie managed to carry on for many more years with undiminished grit and determination along an artistic path of great dignity, right up to the inevitable moment of surrender.

Singing, writing, painting, piano — these were her constants. But it was Roxette who brought her fame: a duo, in truth, never too celebrated by critics, yet one that sold over seventy-five million records worldwide across thirty years of career. The band's peak can be placed between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, when genuine pop-rock anthems (“The Look” and “Joyride” above all) and numerous romantic ballads (the unforgettable “Listen To Your Heart” and “It Must Have Been Love”) stormed the charts, earning the band enormous popularity.

The Seventies, Sweden, a portrait of Marie

Ȍssjȍ is a remote Swedish village in the municipality of Ängelholm, in the county of Scania, three hundred miles south of Stockholm. Gun-Marie Fredriksson was born here on May 30, 1958, the youngest of five children. Her childhood was spent playing on the pavements like any other kid, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds: her father Charles Gȍsta had serious problems with alcohol, and as a little girl she suffered greatly for it, growing up in fear of the man who, weighed down by financial hardship, was forced to sell the family farm and move everyone to Ȍstra Ljungby, where he found work as a postman while her mother Inez Dagmar retrained as a factory worker in the local plant. Not long after, another blow struck when her older sister Anna-Lisa lost her life in a tragic car accident. “She had just turned twenty and was on her way to buy the dress for her engagement party, but during the trip her car was hit by a tanker truck. I was only seven, I barely remember her, but to this day I can still feel perfectly the pain that shattered and tore my family apart: it was in that moment that I understood I had to learn to look after myself.”

With both parents working full-time and unable to look after the children, Marie and her siblings were raised with the help of friends and relatives. “I learned to read music and strum along at a Sunday school I attended with my other sister Tina; we had a wonderful pastor there who taught us to sing and play musical instruments. Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday… I loved every single one of their songs, they gave me a feeling of total freedom. I have beautiful memories of that time.” Then came adolescence and an overwhelming love for music, nurtured in the after-school program in Svalȍv, where she made friends with students from the theatre department and worked on arrangements for amateur shows. By seventeen she was already showing extraordinary vocal talent and took part in a small musical she wrote herself and toured around Sweden, culminating in a performance held in Stockholm in front of Prime Minister Olof Palme.

At that age she was listening to Joni Mitchell, Beatles, Deep Purple and Jimi Hendrix, so after graduating she sought an escape route in Halmstad. She worked in theatre, and in the meantime made contact with the local indie scene, taking her first steps in Strul (Swedish for “Nuisance”), founded in 1978 with her then-boyfriend Stefan Dernbrandt: a rudimentary punk band with a sprawling, patchy line-up, most of its players being occasional guests destined for oblivion after a handful of gigs. Auditions for record labels also proved fruitless, with no one willing to finance them, though they did manage to scrape together enough funds to launch an independent festival (“Strulfestivalen”) which kept them afloat, more or less, until the summer of 1981, when Dernbrandt, having ended his relationship with Fredriksson, decided to abandon the project. She, however, dug in her heels and considered carrying on with the band's other most dedicated member, Martin Sternhufvud, and Strul eventually landed a few appearances on Swedish TV, but their first and only single “Ki-I-Ai-Oo/ Strul Again” flopped, and after a disastrous performance on national radio's Pop Around The Clock, the two decided to change course. Rebranding themselves MaMas Barn (“MaMas Children”, from the initials of their respective names), they finally landed a deal with Cbs Records, and in November 1982 released Barn Som Barn (“Children As Children”), produced by Finn Sjöberg of Abba (it failed to break 1,000 copies). Negligible as they may have been, these early experiences nonetheless proved crucial in shaping Fredriksson, if only because they allowed her to meet the lifelong friend and collaborator Per Gessle, future mastermind and alter ego in Roxette, who had himself been drawn into a couple of sessions with Strul.

Per Gessle, the music, Gyllene Tider

In Sweden, when you hear a song in English on the radio, nobody really cares about the lyrics, and the same goes for Germany and much of Europe. Language is just a tool like any other, but here we have an excellent tradition of singer-songwriters, and they care a great deal that the audience understands what they're saying, a bit like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, which is why they prefer to sing in Swedish. I, on the other hand, started writing at thirteen, four years before I got into music, but I also loved other languages, communication, foreign words… I used them for poems, notes and things like that: that's why today I sing both in Swedish and in English

A talented and versatile multi-instrumentalist, Per Håckan Gessle (Halmstad, January 12, 1959) comes from a background entirely different from Marie Fredriksson's. The youngest of three siblings, he grew up in a Swedish middle-class family: his father Kurt was doing fairly well, working full-time as a plumber and running a small business, while his mother Gunborg Elisabet looked after raising the children and, in her spare time, gave private lessons in porcelain painting. Even before starting school he already had a decent grasp of English, thanks to reading Nme, Melody Maker and other specialist magazines he picked up at the kiosk across from home. One day his brother Bengt needed five kronor to buy cigarettes and sold him “The Kinks Controversy” by the Kinks; Per listened to it and quickly fell for music: he learned to play piano and harmonica, wrote lyrics, sang, and loved Animals, Blondie and the Beach Boys. He dyed his hair red to imitate David Bowie, and to make ends meet he worked in a greenhouse growing mushrooms.

His apprenticeship moved along at a brisk pace, and by the time he met Marie and Strul he was anything but a novice — in fact, back home he could already rightfully claim to be a celebrity: his band Gyllene Tider (roughly translatable as “Golden Ages”, a tribute to the 1974 song “The Golden Age Of Rock ‘N Roll” by Mott The Hoople) were doing really well, so much so that at the time they were the second best-selling Swedish band of all time after Abba (they would inevitably be overtaken by Roxette themselves, as well as by Ace Of Base, Europe, Cardigans and Dr. Alban). They had formed some time before, around 1976: a very young Gessle was cutting his teeth alongside Mats Persson in Grape Rock, then Micke Syd Andersson, Anders Herrlin and Göran Fritzon joined the core lineup, completing a power-pop quintet clearly destined for great things — Gyllene Tider, who went on to produce four fine albums spanning a wide range of stylistic shades.

Their self-titled debut Gyllene Tider, released in February 1980, was a massive success, driven to number 1 in Sweden by the almost-reggae single “Flickorna På Tv2″/”The Girls On Tv2”, still their biggest hit to this day. The second album, Moderna Tider (or “Modern Times”, March 1981), also topped the charts, powered by catchy rock choruses and lyrics about small-town life: it was promoted with a tour across Scandinavia, followed in 1982 by the third album Puls (“Pulse”), which contains the lovely “Sommartider”/”Summer Times” and “Flickan i en Cole Porter’s Sång”/”The Girl In A Cole Porter Song”.

The band hit a crisis in 1985 right after the release of Heartland Cafè, an all-English experiment that, despite selling 45,000 copies at home, failed to make an impact abroad: for the US launch of the minor hit “Teaser Japanese”, Capitol Records insisted on an export-friendly name that could give the group greater international appeal, and that's when the far trendier “Roxette” (taken from a 1975 track by Dr. Feelgood) emerged — but it didn't click right away, and the American dream amounted to a modest six-track Ep (shortened to “Heartland”) that went practically unnoticed. The “Roxette” name was thus shelved for the time being: no great loss, since Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle would recover it a few years later to rewrite their story together. But let's take things in order.

Close encounters: the early days

So the Gyllene Tider break up, but Gessle isn't one to sit idle and tries again with two solo albums that nonetheless struggle to match their former glories, the eponymous Per Gessle (1983) and Scener (1985), which, as it happens, also features Marie Fredriksson among the backing vocalists: this is actually just one of many close encounters from that period, since not long before, the singer had already been hired for backing vocals on Heartland Café, again by her friend, who would promptly return the favor by writing "Tag Dette Hjärta"/"Take This Heart" and "Rickie Lee" for the singer's solo debut Het Vind ("Hot Wind") – the latter was later cut from the tracklist. It's Per himself who pushes her in that direction: Marie indeed seems stuck in a dead end and is eager to explore new paths, trying to shake up a flat existence that leaves her unsatisfied. Gessle has a good ear and considers her "too good to hide backstage or play keyboards", so he champions the idea and introduces her to the trusted former Gyllene Tider producer Lars Lindbom, who after some hesitation signs her to Emi Sweden and has her write for the album Romantisk Blackout by his "Lasse Lindbom Band", where Fredriksson is finally free to fully display her potential.

From there to the solo leap is a short step: Het Vind, as mentioned, comes out on September 20, 1984, preceded by the single "Ännur Doftar Kärlek"/"Still The Scent Of Love", which reaches the top 20 at home, while the title track flags the curious B-side "Natt Efter Natt" (a Swedish-language cover of "All Through The Night" by Cyndi Lauper). The rest of the tracklist settles, without major swings, into an easy-listening contemporary soft-rock that foreshadows an aesthetic dear to many of the future Roxette's power ballads.

The follow-up, Den sjunde vågen ("The Seventh Wave"), earns her the coveted Rockbjörnen award for best Swedish female voice (she'll win it four times in total, a record in the award's history): it comes out on February 17, 1986 and enjoys solid commercial success. This time many of the lyrics are co-written with Lindbom himself, with whom she had in the meantime started a romantic relationship (which ended right during the recording sessions, and is recounted between the lines of "När du såg på mej"/"When You Looked At Me"). Most of the songs – "Den Bästa Dagen"/"The Best Day" and "En Känsla Av Regn"/"A Sense Of Rain" the most noteworthy – were written during the summer of '85 in the relaxed setting of the Canary Islands, where the two took a break from their busy schedules and Marie immersed herself in reading "Papillon", the autobiographical novel by Henri Charrière, whose plot inspired the album's title (Charrière notes that "waves come in series of seven, the last one being the biggest and strongest").

After a two-month tour that also saw her headline the inaugural edition of the Badrock Festival (held among the ruins of Borgholm Castle on the Baltic Sea), the indecent proposal arrives.

Gems from the '80s: here come Roxette

Today Sweden, Tomorrow the world

Emi's director, Rolf Nygren, hadn't failed to notice over the years the countless friendly exchanges between Per and Marie: given the clear chemistry between the two, he figures it wouldn't be a bad idea to pair them up in the studio – after all, we're talking about the most promising songwriter and singer around. No sooner said than done: in no time at all Gessle dusts off an old tune of his, "Svarta Glas"/"Black Glasses", and translates it into English as "Neverending Love", released in July 1986, selling 50,000 copies. It's the very first single by the newborn Roxette and the start of an intense, richly rewarding career.

⟦Q1⟧

(Per Gessle)

"Neverending Love" serves as a prelude to the album Pearls Of Passion, released on October 31 of the same year to mixed results. In Sweden, where the pair are playing at home, it makes its way with remarkable ease (reaching number two on the charts and selling 200,000 copies within a few weeks), but elsewhere the reception is decidedly cooler. It was put together in a couple of weeks and produced by Clarence Öfwerman, who would oversee their fortunes with great dedication for over thirty years (he can often be spotted on stage during their concerts too, as he and his brother Steffan play keyboards and percussion), but as often happens in these cases, not everything works out perfectly: much of the material comes from old demos originally intended for a third, never-realized Per solo project, so many tracks end up rather hastily polished, sounding rough and unfinished (even "Neverending Love" itself, which was meant to be the album's backbone, amounts to little more than a catchy chorus – it had previously been offered to fellow Swede Pernilla Wahlgren, who turned it down). What's more, the album is completely missing those robust guitar riffs that would later become their trademark.

In short, impatience plays its tricks, yet this debut isn't entirely one to be dismissed. Among the best moments are certainly "Surrender" (a warm, passionate duet, a classic of their format), "Voices" (admittedly a bit raw, but already hinting at more than a glimmer of the skills the duo would soon develop), and the sparkling "Soul Deep", which resurrects an old draft in the original language ("Dansar Nerfor Ditt Stupp I Rekordfart"/"Dancing Down Your Dive In Record Speed") reworked ad hoc by Gessle (the lyrics, deemed "too silly", are slightly altered); Marie throws herself fully into it with her powerful vocal contribution, turning it into the band's very first true signature song (a fixture, almost by right, in nearly all their live shows). Pearls before swine? Not at all, let's not exaggerate: Pearls Of Passion packages pleasant but hardly transcendent little songs ("So Far Away", "Joy Of A Toy" and "From One Heart To Another"), while "Secrets That She Keeps" and "Call Of The Wild" leave a touch of regret, as they could have shone brightly in context if given the care they deserved, but the label wouldn't allow delays on delivery, and the race against time curbed their ambitions. A shame. Closing things out smoothly are "Turn To Me", "Like Lovers Do" and the second single "Goodbye To You".

Rounding out the release, in March 1987 came Dance Passion, a remix project that reoffers more or less the same tracklist in dance versions (much to the delight especially of Italian fans, who were otherwise unaware of the songs and of the band's very existence, since Pearls Of Passion had only been released by Emi in Scandinavia and Canada). Ups and downs, then, but at least useful for breaking the ice: in any case, the premiere is done, and Roxette set off on the "Rock Runt Riket" ("Rock Around The Kingdom"), a three-act mini-festival alongside Ratata and Eva Dahlgren (other local favorites with whom they shared the stage all summer long; together they had recorded the single "I Want You" and performed it as an encore ensemble at each of the fifteen dates).

A well-deserved little break, and Marie takes the opportunity to release her third and most successful solo album, ...Efter Stormen ("...After The Storm"), despite Gessle's objections, as he feared the new release and its accompanying tour might divert attention and steal the spotlight from the duo, slowing their momentum. But Marie has already made up her mind: fans' and the media's expectations of her are now very high, and she doesn't want to let them down. The album is released on October 12 of the same year and is an announced triumph, 50,000 copies in under a month and number one at home, driven by the evocative title track "Efter Stormen" (her first Top Ten hit) and by "Bära For En Dag"/("Just For A Day"). The introspective moods and folk-rock contours of the songs seem to distance themselves from her previous work, highlighting the versatility of her voice and cementing her status as a rising star. Worth hearing is "Om Du Såg Mej Nu" ("If You Saw Me Now"), a touching tribute to her father, who had passed away a few years earlier ("if you could see me now, who knows what you'd say...").

Around the same time, she contributes three songs to the tribute album for Cornelis Wreeswijk, "The Flying Dutchman", then tops the charts once again with the non-album single "Sparvöga/Sparrow-Eye". No need to worry, though: far from clipping Roxette's wings, the echo of Marie's individual success, if anything, gives the band an extra boost, and in all those years she and Per never once clashed professionally, such was their rapport and shared vision.

Dressed For Success: the golden years

Year 1988, ready for take-off. Two years after the uncertain Pearls Of Passion, out comes Look Sharp!, an entirely different story. It's recorded in Stockholm between March and September and polished off at Trident II Studios in London, this time under the supervision of Adam Moseley. Gessle wants to change his approach compared to the past, drawn in by the new frontiers opened up by technology, and has something more futuristic, digital and modern in mind, so he clashes with Clarence Öfwerman, who instead wants to keep the whole staff from the first album in place. "Lucky for us the sound engineer broke his leg and had to be replaced," he jokes in a long interview given to Dutch television. "Adam was an incredible programmer and introduced us to the computer age. I bought an Ensoniq ESQ-1 synthesizer and learned how to use sequencers, for 'The Look' all you needed was one finger and three chords. I was thrilled about it and played it for Marie right away, but she didn't seem too convinced at first, she said there was no melody at all and that she didn't feel cut out for rapping... but she enjoyed singing the 'na na na na na' part, so she decided to give it a try." The result is a bombshell: "The Look" throws open the doors of the mainstream to Roxette and remains to this day perhaps their most representative song, an irresistible blend of pop/rock and dance-vibe that never leaves your head.

What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue?!

When everything I’ll ever do I’ll do for you…

And I go la la la la la she’s got the look!

It had been conceived for the Scandinavian and German audiences, their ideal target markets, but then a stroke of luck took them to the top of the world. The best promoter turned out to be one Dean Cushman, an American student based in Sweden on an exchange program (similar to our Erasmus) and a fervent fan of the band. Back in Minneapolis, the young man brought the cassette to a radio show on station KDWB 101.3 FM, where listeners could request their favourite songs or discover new ones. The station manager was there at reception and found the album cover genuinely intriguing (it depicts the masthead of a fictitious The Daily Roxette, a magazine later actually founded online at http://www.dailyroxette.com/ in 1997 and run by fans), so, intrigued, he decided to put the album on air for a few weeks. Requests poured in especially for "The Look", the first track on the listing, until Roxette, almost reluctantly, agreed to release it as a single, which went on to conquer the American market (number one on the Billboard Hot 100) and changed their lives forever. And to think that at any other point the idea wouldn't even have been considered: with very few exceptions, in fact, only tracks sung by Fredriksson were chosen as singles, per the precise artistic directive of mentor Gessle, who intended to shift the focus onto his bandmate in order to make the most of the duo's image.

Released on 21 October 1988, Look Sharp! is one of the coolest albums of the decade's closing years and clearly lays down the dictates of their formula: electronic keyboards, rock guitar and driving melodies, an explosive and tremendously effective cocktail. In Sweden it debuts straight at number one and earns six platinum discs thanks to other heavy hitters, chief among them of course "Listen To Your Heart", a romantic, emotionally charged ballad and without doubt one of the high points of their entire output: the unforgettable solo-piano intro combined with a classy vocal performance gives the song a cinematic beauty à-la "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" or "Take My Breath Away", also quite close to the heavy roars of America's Heart (the chorus does indeed seem to lift from the verses of "What About Love" by the Wilson sisters, but both bands are signed to the same label, EMI, which puts an end to any dispute).

Beyond "The Look" and "Listen To Your Heart", though, there's much more in the mix, for instance the earworm "Dangerous" (in the United States, second only to Janet Jackson's "Escapade"), the fiery "Chances" (the video, directed by Jeroen Kamphoff, alternates colour footage from concerts with black-and-white scenes shot inside a casino, with Marie playing a Black-Jack dealer and roulette croupier, and Per a gambler at the tables) and "Dressed For Success", a spirited back-and-forth duet that closes out the run of singles (in Europe it was actually the first one released) with an encouraging message:

Whatcha gonna tell your brother? – Oh oh oh

Whatcha gonna tell your father?” – I don’t know!

Whatcha gonna tell your mother? -Let me go…

I’m gonna get dressed for success, shaping me up for the big time, baby

Get dressed for success, shaping it up for your love…

A good omen for themselves and their career? Probably, given that from here on the road ahead would be all downhill, what's certain is that in the meantime this tasty call-and-response crafts an anthem to rebellious, carefree freedom. Some have jokingly called them the Swedish Eurythmics, even though the stylistic differences between the two bands are many and obvious, and besides, by this point we're well past the era of new wave. At least in the make-up department, though, the comparison with the Scots fits perfectly: she with cropped blonde hair, a slight build and tomboyish clothes, perhaps less sophisticated than Annie Lennox but with the same grit on stage; he with big dark sunglasses, a leather coat and a guitar perpetually slung over his shoulder, lacking the brilliant flashes of inspiration or charisma of a Dave Stewart but with the same ruthless songwriting instincts. Make no mistake, Gessle's pen will never produce pages of great artistic history, nor will he ever play prophet to some avant-garde, revolutionary musical creed, but his creations will rarely fall below a passing grade. So, back to Look Sharp!, even a couple of frankly skippable filler tracks – "Half A Woman, Half A Shadow" and "(I Could Never) Give You Up" – come across as pleasant and respectable. Standing out are "Paint", sweet and melancholic (the vocal sparring is spot on), "Shadow Of A Doubt" (hypnotic keyboard lines in the style of "The Sun Always Shines On Tv" by Norwegian cousins a-ha, this time genuinely wave-inspired) and the livelier "Dance Away" (the robotic opening riff vaguely recalls "When The Phone Starts Ringing" by Eighth Wonder). The soft, jazzy "Cry" and "Sleeping Single" are the icing on the cake and stand out for the care taken with the arrangements (finger-snaps keeping time and sax to the fore).

Having fun and giving the audience a good time: if that's the diktat, in Italy they pull it off brilliantly at the Arena di Verona, where they delight the Festivalbar '89 crowd with "Dressed For Success" and "The Look". In total the album sells nine million copies worldwide and elevates Roxette to superstar status: even Touchstone Pictures takes notice, wanting them alongside David Bowie, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Natalie Cole and Robert Palmer on the soundtrack of "Pretty Woman", the romantic comedy starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts and directed by Garry Marshall, released in cinemas in March 1990. The duo contribute "It Must Have Been Love", another colossal smash that shatters the charts.

Lay a whisper on my pillow, leave the winter on the ground

I wake up lonely, this air of silence in the bedroom and all around

Touch me now, I close my eyes and dream away…

The ideal soundtrack for any self-respecting love story – with or without a happy ending – in its definitive version also conquers the top of the US charts, staying there for two weeks before being knocked off only by "Step By Step" by New Kids On The Block. Despite the worldwide success, however, few know that the song actually dates back to about three years earlier: as soon as the promotion for Pearls Of Passions had wrapped up, EMI tried to strike while the iron was hot and asked them to treat fans to a "smart" Christmas bonus track, so in December 1987 a first version titled "It Must Have Been Love (Christmas For The Broken Hearted)" was released (but only in the Swedish market), which, after a modest reception at home, was soon forgotten. When Touchstone's emissary got in touch with them two years later, Gessle didn't have any new material ready on the spot, but he put his mind to work and restored the old ruin by universalising its meaning (around twenty seconds of intro were cut along with every reference to Christmas, the line "It's a hard Christmas day" became "It's a hard winter day"), so that the song's notes went on to hand down to Eternity one of the most famous love stories in cinema: it can be heard during the film's key scene, as Vivian (Julia Roberts) gets into the limousine, and a moment later Edward (Richard Gere) leaves the hotel and realises he's in love with her. But that moment is worth a whole lifetime, and it's now too late ("it must have been love, but it’s over now…").

The Big Love: the Nineties

Come on join the joyride everybody! Get your tickets here, step right this way!

But it's never too soon for Joyride (March 1991), which comes out just a few months later and only confirms their talent. The pair are promised golden bridges and a virtually unlimited budget on condition they relocate to Los Angeles and work with America's most sought-after producers, who intend to ride the wave of the rampant Roxette-mania to capitalize as much as possible on the band's favorable momentum, but Per and Marie resist the temptation, and all things considered it's a good thing, since despite its intercontinental scope, the album manages to keep intact that typically European freshness and personality. "We're proud of our Swedish musicians and we'd rather keep going down our own path with them," they state flatly. "We already consider ourselves lucky, this is fine as it is."

The recordings take eleven months and are held between Stockholm's Emi studios and Gessle's own Tits & Ass studio in Halmstad, where he now tries to beef up the guitars to develop a more aggressive, rock-oriented sound that could break down the last resistance and silence the remaining ranks of detractors (few, in truth) who keep accusing them of a certain glibness and shoddiness of content. And this time they really hit the jackpot: with 11 million copies sold, Joyride is their best-selling album ever; at this point the pair have reached such artistic mastery and confidence in their own abilities that they can pretty much do whatever they have in mind, with no chance of missing the mark.

Hallo! You Fool! I Love You!

The first single released is the title track "Joyride", another three-pointer that sinks straight to number 1 in the United States (their fourth and final chart-topper after "The Look", "Listen To Your Heart" and "It Must Have Been Love") and in pretty much every corner of the world, thanks to a fun, mischievous chorus and a playful whistle that marks the beat: the assist comes from Gessle's then-girlfriend (and wife of roughly thirty years now) Åsa Nordin, who one morning leaves a note on his piano reading "Hej, din tok, jag älskar dig" ("Hey, you fool, I love you"); the rest is the story of an LP that makes good cheer, vitality and dynamism its DNA, a whirlwind of positive energy ("The Big L.", "Hotblooded" and "Knockin' On Every Door") and raw feeling finding its emotional epicenter in the raw-ballads "Fading Like A Flower" and "Spending My Time" (the former a solo-piano intro building into a wild crescendo, the latter quieter and more desperate).

Spending my time watching the days go by

feeling so small, I stare at the wall

hoping that you think of me too, I’m spending my time…

"I thought it would be our biggest hit of all time," Gessle would later say about the latter track, "if only our American label hadn't fired a bunch of... ah, never mind." But it's in its B-side that the real gem lies hidden: "The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye" is quite simply one of the most beautiful songs Roxette ever wrote, originally penned in 1990 for Thomas Anders of Modern Talking (later also recorded by Laura Branigan and Jason Donovan) and therefore left off the tracklist of Joyride (though it was added back in on some later CD reissues). Several versions of the song exist, the best undoubtedly being the one known as the "Bassflow Remake", courtesy of DJ Peter Boström, which flirts with house music.

While with "Watercolours In The Rain" and "Church Of Your Heart" the pair pass the folk-acoustic test with flying colors (in the style of latter-day Simon & Garfunkel), it's another couple of romantic ballads that raise the album's technical bar, confirming them as true specialists in the field — sometimes perhaps a bit formulaic and faintly teenage, but some of them, dash it, are genuinely beautiful. Such is the case with "(Do You Get) Excited?" (which nails a heavenly chorus, pure chills) and the sadly prophetic "Things Will Never Be The Same" (another vocal showcase worth framing from Fredriksson, later to become her epitaph). Rounding things off are the carefree "I Remember You", "Small Talk" and the more sensual "Physical Fascination".

Finally, worth noting is the cover artwork, created by Kjell Andersson and inspired by the Beatles' 1967 EP "Magical Mystery Tour", while the album's title instead takes its cue from an old interview in which Paul McCartney describes his songwriting experience alongside John Lennon as "a long joyride", given his bandmate's fondness for LSD.

And Gessle? Does he turn to drugs too for inspiration? "No, I wouldn't say so at all... Lennon is a constant source of inspiration for me, but I've never wanted anything to do with that sort of thing, even though almost everyone used them in the small town where I grew up. All over the world other artists often offer them to us, but we've always turned them down. If anything, we Roxette have, uh... a bit of a problem with alcohol," he admits with amusement. "When we pass through Germany the record company execs offer us rivers of tequila and other drinks, Marie beats everyone hands down, she knocks back a couple of bottles at a time!" A comparison with the other fab four, Björn, Agnetha, Benny and Frida, Sweden's last great pop band, is inevitable, but "let's not kid ourselves, they're untouchable," Gessle continues with an admiring sigh — incidentally, back in 1982 he had set Dorothy Parker's poem "Threnody" to music, turning it into a song for Lyngstad's album "Something's Going On". The constant comparison with Abba doesn't scare them, if anything it spurs them on: "But we belong to different generations; we share the same taste for melody, but compared to them we're clearly more rock-oriented — maybe what we have in common is that, like the four of them, Marie and I were already famous before we joined forces; as for the rest... what can I say? Let's keep our fingers crossed!"

The first world tour, the "Join The Joyride World Tour", kicks off on September 4th in Helsinki amid a riot of sound and color on a faux-Mondrian set, and runs until the following summer across Europe, Australia, North and South America, racking up staggering numbers (a hundred shows for a total audience of roughly one million seven hundred thousand people; the documentary film Live-ism features excerpts from the show held at the Sydney Entertainment Centre on December 13th, 1991). And it's precisely during a stop on the winter Australian leg that Fredriksson finds love: his name is Michael "Mycke" Bolyos, keyboardist for Sugarcane, who will also have a profound impact on her professional choices. "If I hadn't met him," she recalls, "maybe I wouldn't have been able to carry on with Roxette. I spent my time in bars, I drank too much... I wasn't happy and I clashed with the press, I always had to be nice, available, give the right answers. The actress inside me was taking over my private life — the truth is I felt confused, lost and inadequate." They will marry in a private ceremony in May 1994 (the couple will have two children, Inez Josefin and Oskar Mikael); Gessle and his partner are not among the wedding guests, but only because the ceremony is reserved for the closest relatives.

Studios, Concerts, Hotel Rooms And Other Strange Places

The traveling funfair of the "Join The Joyride World Tour" finds a fitting coda in Tourism: Songs From Studios, Stages, Hotelrooms And Other Strange Places (August 29th, 1992), their fourth studio effort, often mistaken for a live album. The liner notes prefer instead the label "tour album", meaning sixteen old and new tracks worked on in the most varied locations during breaks between shows. "Fingertips", for instance, was recorded at Nas Nuvens in Rio de Janeiro, "Never Is A Long Time" (an extremely gentle lullaby, but never drowsy) in a nightclub in São Paulo, "Here Comes The Weekend" (with its sixties echoes) and the new version of "So Far Away" in room 603 of the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires. The idea is to make the most of the moment's adrenaline, so a few live tracks are added to the lineup: "Joyride" and "The Look" (Sydney), "Things Will Never Be The Same" (Zurich) and a country-flavored rereading of "It Must Have Been Love" (its intro lifted from the Estadio San Carlos in Santiago, Chile, the rest polished off at Ocean Way in Los Angeles).

Turning to the new material, the standout is "How Do You Do", a propulsive uptempo number clocking in at 121 beats per minute that instantly becomes one of the fans' most beloved tracks, alongside the twin ballads "The Rain" and "Queen Of Rain", both of considerable stature. Also worth a listen are "The Heart Shaped Sea" and "Cinnamon Street", while "Silver Blue" and "Come Back Before You Leave" give new life to two old B-sides (of "The Look" and "Joyride" respectively).

Overall, Tourism receives positive reviews everywhere, and Roxette win the Echo Award as Group of the Year; back home they're even honored with a postage stamp bearing their faces, as if they were national heroes. Unfortunately, though, "How Do You Do" remains their last monster hit, and not through any fault of their own: from this point on, the American public seems to lose interest in the duo, the real problem being the simultaneous explosion of grunge, hip-hop and hardcore, which Fredriksson tries to counter first by lending her voice to the charity project Artister För Miljö/Artists For The Environment (a sort of Band Aid fronted by former Abba member Anni-Frid Lyngstad, with everyone singing together on "Änglamark/Angel Land"), and then with her fourth solo album Den Ständiga Resan (The Eternal Journey), steeped in dark, introspective tones (the singles "Så Länger Det Lyser Mittermot/As Long As There Is A Light On The Other Side" and "Mellan Sommar Och Hőst/Between Summer And Autumn" are both commendable).

But that's not enough: the generational shift of the Nineties changes people's musical tastes, so a clean break is needed.

Almost Unreal: The Joyriders' Decline

Right, because after the wonder-trilogy of Look Sharp!/Joyride/Tourism nobody could have predicted it, but the toy breaks. Not a disastrous collapse, but a slow and inexorable wearing-down, though one still capable of delivering the occasional flash of brilliance. Having put behind them a brief stopover at the Stockholm Circus for MTV Unplugged (January 9, 1993 — they're the first non-native English-speaking artists to take part in the show), on May 10 they go back into the studio as Roxette and bring into the world "Almost Unreal", a brand-new blockbuster single commissioned by Walt Disney Pictures for the film "Hocus Pocus" with Bette Midler. In the end, though, a track by the US girl group En Vogue gets the nod instead, and they take it personally.

Just a few months later the film adaptation of Nintendo's famous mascot, "Super Mario Bros", comes out, and Walt Disney wastes no time calling them back in: Per and Marie, out of spite, consider pulling out, but after some reluctance they agree to let the song be used, since they're both fans of Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper. The quarrel doesn't quite die down, and later the pair call the film "ridiculous", even disowning the song as a "parody of the band". In truth, it's a decent mid-tempo number in D major that at least makes the band's European fans happy.

On this side of the Ocean, in fact, the duo keep going strong with undiminished appeal, since shifts in taste are less radical, and 1994's Crash! Boom! Bang! proves it: the instant-classic "Sleeping In My Car" immediately tops the charts in their home country thanks to a punchy, pop-punk-derived refrain that lets Marie stretch her voice across a range of more than three octaves. The album as a whole marks a shift away from their usual radio-friendly productions, revealing an unexpected change of artistic gear aimed at throwing a spanner in the works of the Brit-monopoly (Oasis, Blur, Verve, Suede, Stone Roses etc.) that dominates everywhere at the start of the decade.

The tracklist is evenly split between songs sung by Gessle (the naive "Vulnerable" stands out), Fredriksson (the excellent, near-psychedelic title track "Crash! Boom! Bang!", "The First Girl On The Moon" and "What's She Like") or both together ("I'm Sorry"), but not everything that glitters is gold, and many tracks end up stuck halfway, too rock for pop lovers ("Harleys And Indians/Riders In The Sky", "Lies" and "I Like The Sound Of Crashing Guitars") and vice versa (the other singles "Run To You" and the pyrotechnic "Fireworks", still decent though). "Place Your Love" (Beatles-esque in style) and the love anthem "Love Is All" come and go without leaving much mark, while "Go To Sleep", "Lies" and "Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way" pass by without a flicker.

In short, the spark is missing, except for the already-mentioned "Sleeping In My Car", which represents their last foray into the Billboard Hot 100 (a modest sixtieth position — in the US a shortened version of the album was distributed in partnership with McDonald's, but outside the burger joints the band drops off the radar for good).

Better to dive back into the live dimension, which has always shown them at their best: the "Crash! Boom! Bang! Tour" is yet another era-defining sell-out run and once again proves how good their live performances are — at Johannesburg's Ellis Park Stadium 130,000 fans cheer them on, and the Beijing stop is memorable too, with Roxette becoming the first Western band to perform there since Wham! in 1985 (after scrupulously self-censoring their lyrics and a year-long wait to get visas).

First interlude: rarities, compilations, the world according to Gessle

1995 is a time for taking stock: in February, Rarities comes out (only in Japan and South America), a complete archive of demos, B-sides, outtakes and assorted remixes (plus excerpts from the 1993 MTV Unplugged never previously released), while October brings the best-of Don't Bore Us! Get To The Chorus!, which gathers the best of their catalogue and offers four unreleased tracks still caught between hard-rock showboating ("June Afternoon" and "She Doesn't Live Here Anymore") and syrupy melodies ("I Don't Want To Get Hurt" and the obligatory ballad "You Don't Understand Me", credited to Gessle/Desmond Child, the first track chronologically written together with someone outside their own circle).

In 1996 Gessle takes part in Gyllene Tider's short reunion tour "Åretåget Live!" (yielding an EP and the single "Juni, Juli, Augusti"), then picks up a dictionary and translates Roxette's finest love songs into Spanish: the result is a bit clumsy, since "Soy Una Mujer/Fading Like A Flower" and "Como La Lluvia En El Cristal/Watercolours In The Rain" betray numerous mangled words and mispronunciations, yet Baladas En Español sells very well in Latin countries, particularly in Argentina, where the aficionados are always especially warm and welcome the singles "No Sè Si Es Amor/It Must Have Been Love" and "Un Dìa Sin Ti/Spending My Time" with open arms (their first entry on the Latin-Pop Airplay chart).

In 1997 Per and Marie both have their hands full on their own fronts: Gessle and his longtime partner Åsa Nordin (whom he married four years earlier at Västra Strö church in Eslöv) welcome their son Gabriel Titus, and the musician celebrates the event with his solo album (his first in English) The World According To Gessle (a nod to John Irving's novel "The World According To Garp"), from which three singles are pulled in full Elvis-style: "Kix", "Do You Wanna Be My Baby?" and "I Want You To Know" (videos directed by Jonas Åkerlund), whose arrangements are put together with his longtime friends from Gyllene Tider and with Brainpool, the new sensation of Swedish pop.

Among the most interesting ideas are the rocked-up "T-T-T-Take It!", "Elvis In Germany (Let's Celebrate!)" and "Be-Any-1-U-Wanna-B" (a tribute to Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson), while "Love Doesn't Live Here" (a bonus track for the Japanese market) had originally been written for Belinda Carlisle, to whom he had also given "Always Breaking My Heart" some time before (it appears on the Australian singer's album "A Woman And A Man").

Around the same time Fredriksson is on maternity leave, but she doesn't just sit around: together with her husband Bolyos she co-produces her fourth solo effort, I En Tid Som Vår ("In A Time Like Ours"), though in her eighth month of pregnancy she can't put any more energy into promotion and settles for a single release, "Tro"/"Hope", which despite its downbeat, Chris Isaak-like tone and a scaled-back ad campaign sets her chart-longevity record (staying on the charts for more than six months).

Together again: Have A Nice Day, Room Service

Roxette is not finished. But soon, I suspect

(Per Bjurman, Aftonbladet)

So what happened to Roxette? The long and justified break for family and personal matters obviously drains some oxygen from the duo's shared goals, but finally, in 1998, they lock themselves away at the El Cortijo studios in Marbella, Spain, emerging about eighteen months later reinvigorated with Have A Nice Day (February 1999), a new album of original material that breaks the impasse and ends a silence lasting almost five years. New mix engineer Michael Ilbert tries to soften the sound's rawness in favor of a tasteful return to the electronics of their golden years, and the lead single "Wish I Could Fly" soars high on the UK charts (number eleven is the peak since "Almost Unreal" hit number seven back in 1993), thanks to its passionate ebb and flow of burning emotional intensity.

I wish I could fly out in the blue,

over this town following you,

I’d fly over rooftops, the great boulevards

to try to find out who you really are…

The video, directed by their friend Åkerlund, is a collage of fragments stolen from the lives of different people, lovers sleeping or having sex, prostitutes, buses, streets, subway stations (one shot even features Gessle and his little son Gabriel). Marie is in her apartment, alone and longing for someone, and the delivery and lush orchestral accompaniment bring her close to the Madonna of the "Frozen" era, but also to the exotic, cross-pollinated pop of Corrs, Dido, Savage Garden and Anggun. Along the same lines are the elegant "I Was So Lucky," the closing track "Beautiful Things," and the second single "Anyone," this time inspired by the work of Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector (its video was shot on the beaches of Lisbon, with a final scene showing Fredriksson attempting suicide by drowning in the ocean, which was censored by MTV Europe). The techno experiment of third single "Stars" is an odd curiosity (even if the children's choir sits awkwardly with the frantic beat), though perhaps one could have expected a bit more from the rest of the tracklist, given the glossy production and the meticulous arrangements (synthesizers and drum machines are counterbalanced by violin, cello, saxophone, trombone, flugelhorn, zither, maracas and other string and brass instruments). "Crush On You" and "7Twenty7" fall back on a plasticky, soulless Euro-pop. Slightly better are "It Will Take A Long Time" (again borrowed by Julia Roberts and Richard Gere for the film "Runaway Bride," though not included on the official soundtrack), "Waiting For The Rain" (once again Beatles-flavored, Beatles), and "You Can't Put Your Arms Around What's Already Gone" (a few too many creaks, but craftsman Gessle always guarantees a decent melodic standard).

A hidden little gem is the desolate "Cooper," at least blunt and sincere, while the fourth and final single "Salvation" only manages a meager number 46 at home, despite the prestigious stamp of Anton Corbijn on the video shot between Naples and Amalfi. Best forgotten are "Staring At The Ground" and "Pay The Price," which pile on further to the near-flop of Have A Nice Day — in the United States no label backs them anymore and the album isn't even released there, so in Europe the newly founded Roxette Recordings, set up by the duo themselves, steps in to patch things up; in the edition for Arab countries they even censor, for religious reasons, the naked children pictured behind them on the cover.

The bestseller Äntligen ("At Last") fares decidedly better — Marie Fredriksson's first solo greatest-hits collection spends eight weeks at the top of the Sverigetopplistan in 2000 — but it's a flash in the pan: Roxette's sixth album, Room Service, comes out in 2001 and proves to be the final nail in the coffin for the band's hopes of a rebirth, as they struggle to digest the turn of the millennium. Seduced and abandoned by Edel Records America (who first offer them a new contract, then immediately declare bankruptcy and leave them stranded), the duo hang on by a thread and pin their hopes on three singles: the electric "The Centre Of The Heart" (their least imaginative yet most expensive video ever, and we'll never understand why), the melodic little breakfast number "Milk And Toast And Honey," and "Real Sugar," a sly, sugary disco-rock tongue-twister staged by Jesper Hiro as a late-night talk show, where they belt it out backed by punk puppets doing a Ramones impression (Ramones). The fun stop-and-go trick of the bridge ⟦Q1⟧ bridges into a catchy chorus, but these are scraps of fleeting glory that only a small, mostly Central European, band of die-hard Roxers buy into.

Real Sugar! I don't want to climb no walls

Real Sugar! That’s what I want but none at all

Real Sugar! Sweet as a sweet can be

Real Sugar! That’s what I want and what I need

Unlike the previous Have A Nice Day, for which she had written ten songs, this time Fredriksson writes only "Little Girl" and is barely consulted on decisions by factotum Gessle, who lacks the spark of his best days — and it shows: the tracklist loses steam, and Room Service stays stuck in a hybrid halfway between the contemporary Dandy Warhols and the Duran Duran of "Medazzaland."

In short, room service delivered via effects-laden guitars, electroclash and synthetic grooves isn't as appetizing as it sounds, and "Jefferson," "Bringing Me Down To My Knees" and "Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)" (the chorus's insistent "just a little bit" nods to Aretha Franklin's "Respect," Aretha Franklin) only help sweeten the pill.

Worth saving are "Fools" and "Make My Head Go Pop," but by now Roxette are fish out of water in an era that isn't theirs. "Looking For Jane," "My World, My Love, My Life" and "It Takes You No Time To Get There" round out a dozen tracks whittled down from twenty-nine candidate demos, but perhaps the best weren't chosen, and the album never takes off. Fate lends a hand too, condemning it to limited promotion (several tour dates would be cancelled following the attacks on the World Trade Center).

Marie Fredriksson's September 11th

As a small consolation, in 2002 a Music Export Prize is awarded directly by the Swedish government at the Grammy ceremony, followed by the compilations The Ballad Hits (featuring the unreleased "A Thing About You" and "Breathe") and The Pop Hits ("Opportunity Nox" and "Little Miss Sorrow" the only new tracks). But a year after the attack on the Twin Towers, September 11th takes on an even more dramatic meaning in the Fredriksson household: on that day in 2002, she is due to fly to Antwerp, where a concert awaits her, so she wakes up early and goes jogging with her husband. She seems in good shape, running faster than him, but when she gets home to pack her bags she feels a strange sickness come over her and rushes to the bathroom, overwhelmed by nausea. Suddenly she faints and hits her head on the floor so hard that she fractures her skull (later, in her autobiography "Listen To My Heart," she will describe it as an epileptic seizure). Help arrives immediately — Bolyos is there and rushes her to the hospital — but the diagnosis is devastating: she has brain cancer. It's the start of a long journey through hell, between hospital stays, hope, treatments, pain and worry: doctors give her barely a year to live, but she has two young children and a husband she loves, so she cannot and will not give up. Slow progress follows, punctuated by setbacks, but she is left to fight largely alone. The local press spreads false reports about her real condition and all but writes her off, and even her doctor turns on her, insinuating that she brought the illness on herself through reckless behavior, smoking and drinking too much. Lies and half-truths aside, the malignant mass is surgically removed, and after several rounds of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Marie is declared clinically cured. "Many people who fall victim to a serious illness might feel as though they've ended up in a cold, bare room, completely isolated from the rest of the world," is how she describes those three extremely difficult years. "The closest and dearest might reach out a hand, but no one does. And then... like a miracle, a wonder: the tumor never came back."

The delicate situation obviously puts her artistic career on hold, but during rehabilitation she doesn't sit still, turning to music as a form of therapy instead. Together with Bolyos she gets to work in her little studio in Djursholm and writes The Change, her first solo album entirely in English, reflecting on the days of her illness and confronting the subject of death through a kind of return to childhood: the songs ("2:Chance" and "All About You" the singles, "thanks God I'm alive" the manifesto lyric) draw on the gospel and rhythm 'n' blues she loved listening to as a child (many of them had already been previewed in the mid-Nineties during some live appearances with Sugarcane, her husband's band). Meanwhile she also takes up drawing (the nervous charcoal sketch on the cover is her own, scrawled in the clinic's corridors while waiting for test results), and exhibits her self-portraits at the Doktor Glas in Stockholm and the Lilla Galleriet in Gothenburg.

Her recovery continues and keeps her voice warm with Min Bäste Vän (My Best Friend), a collection of covers paying tribute to Swedish artists of the Sixties and Seventies who had such an impact on her tastes during adolescence that they still influence her songwriting today (among them John Holm, Pugh Rogefeldt, Tom Paxton, Tim Hardin, Cornelis Vreswijk and Mikael Wiehe of the Hoola Bandoola Band). She then schedules a meeting with Gessle: on the table, the future of Roxette, now more uncertain than ever.

Second interlude: Mazarin, the plumber's son, Rox-Box and other odds and ends

The moment is a difficult one, and Marie suggests disbanding the band. Per understands completely and, given the circumstances, reluctantly agrees; he too goes solo and sets off again with Mazarin ("Cupcake"), fourteen tracks entirely in Swedish that become a huge success at home (with a small cameo from Fredriksson on "På Promendad Genom Stan"/"Strolling Through The Town"), before reuniting with Gyllene Tider for the album Finn 5 Fel!, which culminates in a Swedish tour marking their twenty-fifth anniversary.

In 2005 Gessle himself hid behind the pseudonym Son Of A Plumber and put out a kind of eponymous white album dedicated to his father, "Kurt – The Fastest Plumber In The West" (launched by three singles, "C'Mon/Jo'Anna Says", "Hey Mr. DJ" and "I Like That"; the closing track "Making Love Or Expecting Rain" rattles off lyrics in French). At this point came a Litteris et Artibus medal from King Carl XVI Gustaf himself, in recognition of Roxette's international achievements, and both members of the band attended the award ceremony: it was one of Marie's very rare public appearances in those years, and her first ever since the surgery. Still dazed and in poor shape, Fredriksson was blind in one eye and had limited hearing, but wouldn't miss the prestigious event for anything.

The band's hiatus was sustained by a few throwaway dancefloor remakes (the trance version of "Listen To Your Heart" by Belgian act D.H.T. and "Fading Like A Flower" by German outfit Mysterio) and various more or less plausible Rox-medleys on the radio, good enough to keep interest alive ahead of Rox-Box (Roxette 86-06), a lavish box set across four CDs and two DVDs gathering practically the entire audio-video catalogue of the band, plus the previously unreleased "One Wish" and "Reveal" (the 20th anniversary package opens with a nod to the Beatles' "It was twenty years today…" from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band").

Almost simultaneously came A Collection Of Roxette Hits: Their 20 Greatest Songs!, another cheerful compilation with an eloquent title that doubled down on the 20th-anniversary celebrations and closed out the year on a high note. As if it were needed…

In 2007, though, Gessle showed signs of slipping with the disappointing En händig man (A Handy Man), written in his native tongue with an autobiographical bent, and he also returned to bookshelves with "Att Vara Per Gessle" (Be Per Gessle), a full account of his life told through the saga of Roxette, Gyllene Tider and numerous lesser-known anecdotes (with crucial help from journalist Sven Lindström). He tried to bounce back in English with Party Crusher (2008), but things went even worse: it's his only project (Roxette included) not to reach number 1 at home since the days of Pearls Of Passion, and it didn't even make it onto shop shelves (available only as a download). Better news, thankfully, came from the sickbay: Marie seemed to be gradually recovering, or at least enough to float the idea of a comeback, and persistent rumours of a possible band reunion began to circulate.

Back together: Charm School, Travelling, Good Karma

The sweet hello…

The rumours were confirmed in an interview given to the BBC in April 2009. "It's true, we are talking about it. It all depends on her," Gessle confirmed, and the groundwork was laid on 6 May that year at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, during a date of his "Party Crusher Tour", when at the end of the set Per announced with visible nerves: "I'd like to welcome a dear old friend." Fredriksson then joined him onstage and together they sent the crowd into raptures with "It Must Have Been Love" and "The Look": it was her first public appearance in eight years, and the scene repeated itself three days later at the tour's final stop in Stockholm. In July they took part in the New Wave Festival in Latvia, and the comeback continued cautiously through a series of small-scale events scattered across Russia, Denmark and Norway. On 18 June they performed in front of Crown Princess Victoria in the Swedish capital, singing "The Look" at a gala evening hosted by the Concert Hall the day before her royal wedding to Daniel Westling. On 4 August, meanwhile, they treated a hand-picked audience of 700 lucky fans to a secret show at Leif's Lounge at the Hotel Tylösand, a seafront hotel in Halmstad owned by Gessle and an engineer friend of his. In the autumn, finally, came "Night Of The Proms" dates in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands: particularly significant was the show held on 23 October at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, almost as if to exorcise the past with a concert in the very place they'd been forced to cancel on that fateful 11 September 2002.

These were the dress rehearsals for the long-awaited return to the studio: "She's Got Nothing On (But The Radio)" came out in January 2011 and was their best-selling single since "How Do You Do", probably more because of the feverish anticipation that preceded it than for its actual merit. Nothing particularly convoluted or clever, just an innocent, high-fidelity dance-pop tune, cheeky and mischievous, somewhere between Donna Summer and Tom Jones. Charm School followed hot on its heels (February 2011), but opinions on it were mixed and did nothing to settle the debate: on one hand, Eighties nostalgists lamented the absence of those keyboard carpets that had once made the fortune of "Fading Like A Flower" or "Listen To Your Heart" (wrongly so, since "Speak To Me" is a full-blown ballad capable of reviving those former glories), while on the other critics appreciated the varied sonic kaleidoscope on display across a tracklist articulate enough to speak both the electro-experimental language of Muse on "Big Black Cadillac" and the country-rock of Tom Petty on "Way Out" and "Dream On", passing through the ambient tones of "Sitting On The Top Of The World" and the carefree folk of "After All".

More sedate and straightforward are "I'm On My Own Way" (its guitar intro echoes R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts"), "I'm Glad You Called" and "Happy On The Outside", strong on vocal performance. Finally, "No One Makes It On Her Own" and "Only When I Dream" round off a varied, elaborate mosaic that nonetheless stays muted and lacking the charm promised by the title. It's worth a couple of listens before writing it off, though, or at least that's what the eight hundred thousand spectators who packed stadiums from Kazan to Mexico City during the 140 shows of the subsequent tour seem to think (their first tour in 15 years, with the band returning to Beijing courtesy of the Chinese Minister of Culture's permission). In the studio, though, things weren't going the way they'd hoped: with little left to lose, and aware they were now heading down an inexorable path toward the sunset, Roxette churned out records at lightning speed.

Less than a year went by before Gessle announced the ninth album, Travelling, via Twitter; it came out in 2012 and conceptually paired up with Tourism, sharing with it the subtitle Songs From Studios, Stages, Hotelrooms And Other Strange Places in its full heading. Unlike its predecessor, though, this is a more cohesive, less scattershot work: most of the tracks this time were recorded in Sweden during breaks from the so-called "Neverending World Tour", the umbrella nickname covering the 256 shows the band played across seventeen distinct legs between 23 October 2009 and 8 February 2016: setting aside easy accusations of a Telethon-style, compassion-driven marketing exercise given the singer's uncertain medical situation and her stature as an artist, the melodies are genuinely convincing and the tracklist offers a welcome breath of fresh air. From these premises come the Seventies flower-power vignettes "Me&You&Terry&Julie" and "Angel Passing", plus the Motown-soul of "Lover, Lover, Lover". "Touched By The Hand Of God", meanwhile, goes head to head with Abba's golden pop, but ended up on the wrong album (it had been written a few months earlier and was meant to be titled "Charm School", as suggested by the lyrics: "I just came out to play outta charm school"). The single "It's Possible" is presented in two different guises, the guitar-synth-and-vocal-effects-heavy version one and the acoustic version two, alongside the gentler "Easy Way Out" and "Excuse Me Sir, Do You Want Me To Check On Your Wife?" (banjo and harmonica lending a country flavour).

"The Weight Of The World", "See Me", "Perfect Excuse" and "Turn The Tide" are the inevitable by-the-book ballads, simple as can be, yet functional to the cause of a band that's probably past its prime and out of fashion but still eager to have its say. As usual, the tracklist is padded out with a few live cuts – the evergreen "It Must Have Been Love" (Rotterdam 2009), "Stars" (Dubai 2011) and "She's Got Nothing On (But The Radio)" (Rio de Janeiro 2011) – yet despite peaking at number seven in Sweden, making it by far their biggest commercial flop, the album still received positive reviews. One is tempted to think, as some have suggested, that the fuss the band caused back in their Stardom days might not be entirely welcome in sleepy Sweden, at least as far as the local record industry is concerned, reluctant as it was to release the following Blu-Ray Roxette Live: Travelling The World (Parlophone and Warner gave it a chance, pairing it with the documentary It All Begins Where It Ends – The Incredible Story Of Roxette).

In 2013 the pair took another break to regroup, and the tireless Gessle kept himself busy with the now-legendary Gyllene Tider (the new Dags Att Tänka På Refrängen went double platinum, with "Knallpulver" and "Chikaboom" as standout tracks); Marie Fredriksson's solo career, meanwhile, moved forward in parallel, and on 20 November the singer released her eighth solo album, Nu! (it would be her last), produced through a joint effort between Parlophone and the small independent label Mary Jane/Amelia Music, owned by the blonde vocalist (the songs are in Swedish and feature contributions from various musicians including Kenneth Gärdestad, Uno Svenningsson, Lustans Lakejer, Johan Kinde and Gessle himself). The record was promoted with a tour of Swedish concert halls, at the end of which, however, Marie's health suddenly seemed to take a turn for the worse.

…the sad goodbye

Even though doctors forbade her from continuing to perform around the world, Marie wouldn't listen and kept going her own way. It was a matter of life and death, but perhaps that's exactly why she didn't care: she knew she had little time left, and as the consummate rock star she was, she had no intention of bowing out quietly. After all, between music, marriage and family, the former child prodigy from Össjö could say she had already fulfilled all her dreams, and if she really had to go, she wanted to leave the stage in style. With the band's thirtieth anniversary approaching, her presence was a must at the RoXXXette 30th Anniversary Tour (an endless string of concerts starting in Russia in 2014 and set to close in South Africa in 2016 to coincide with the anniversary date; the pair also stopped off in Milan on 10 May 2015 at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi).

She showed remarkable courage, but the consequences of that reckless choice were not long in coming: the accumulated stress took its toll, and her already fragile condition gradually deteriorated. She appeared increasingly weakened by ongoing treatments, had no short-term memory and struggled enormously to learn new lyrics, so the most recent songs were dropped from the live set in favour of the usual warhorses she knew by heart. After a few accidental falls during the early shows, she continued the tour singing seated as a precaution. It probably made some bloodsucking manager happy, but watching her wilt, almost motionless, pinned to a stool, was a gut punch and a blow to the heart for the audience. Eyes wide open, skin drawn, the pain had by now become unbearable: Marie stopped treatment, but reduced to such a state she drew more tears than applause. So she made the only sensible decision left and, on 18 April 2016, stunned everyone by announcing her retirement from the stage with a terse press release thanking fans for their support over the years. Her comrade-in-arms through a thousand battles, Per, nodded in agreement and added: "Our Joyride on the road has come to an end, but we had a hell of a good time, didn't we?"

The show on 8 February 2016 at the Grand West Arena in Cape Town would go down in history as Roxette's final concert; the remaining leg of the scheduled tour was in fact cancelled. The pair immediately made it up to their many disappointed fans by giving them, as a small consolation prize, Good Karma, released in June of that same year and standing as the band's testament. The album was written together with Addeboy vs Cliff, Swedish musicians/producers hand-picked by Gessle specifically to inject new energy and modernise the sound, which is noticeably more electronic and in step with the times. "The most exciting thing about the collaboration is that they're much younger than us and think in a completely different way, but we complement each other," Per Gessle notes with satisfaction; on the opening track "Why Dontcha" he calls the shots on acoustic guitar, flanked on sax by Christoffer Lindqvist of Brainpool, who had by then become a permanent member of the team alongside backing vocalist Helena Josefsson (both with them since the late Nineties). It's a breezy, frivolous midtempo number in the style of the Bangles, evoking sunny days and paving the way for the nostalgic, fatalistic "It Just Happens" (the second track on the record and lead single, dealing with love as a sudden, unexpected occurrence).

It just happens, you don't know what's going on

if it’s new or if it’s been there since long

if it’s right or wrong

You fall in love

You fall in love

The title track "Good Karma" is a kick in the shins to boredom, structured in the image and likeness of "Fading Like A Flower" (an ouverture for solo piano building into a bold crescendo), while the electro-stomper "This One" marches relentlessly over a synth-floor straight out of an eighties space-age flashback. "20 BPM" and "You Make It Simple" are too menacing and robotic (the two tracks where the hand of newly enlisted Addeboy vs Cliff is most exaggerated), a bit off topic compared to the rest of the album, which is more measured and maybe won't be "the best Roxette record" as Marie declared for obvious reasons at the album's presentation, but it certainly offers plenty of notable moments: "Some Other Summer", for instance, a sort of millennial "Domino Dancing" (Latin rhythms and flashes of vocoder), "You Can't Do This To Me" and above all "Why Don't You Bring Me Flowers" (harmonious and disenchanted, one of the finest highlights of the band's 2.0 version). Special mention for the ethereal "From A Distance" (which explores alien territories with a dream-pop flavor), but it's the sublime "April Clouds" that stands as Fredriksson's last agonized flutter of wings, a fitting conclusion to a career and a life lived like a dream, experienced at every moment exactly as she wanted. Piano, strings and a chorus that slips away like an unheard plea, amid nostalgia, grey clouds and a few misty eyes. Then silence.

Addio Marie, things will never be the same

Marie passed away on a freezing Monday in December after a seventeen-year battle with cancer. It was the Swedish daily Expressen that announced the news to the world in a few lines, following a press release from manager Marie Dimberg stating, "it is with great sadness that we must announce that one of our greatest and most beloved artists has left us. Marie Fredriksson died on the morning of December 9, 2019, following her illness." The official website of Dimberg Jernberg Management added: "Marie leaves us a great musical legacy. Her extraordinary voice — both powerful and sensitive — and her magical live performances will be remembered by all of us who were lucky enough to witness them. But we also remember a wonderful person with a great appetite for life and a woman with a very big heart who took care of everyone she met." The most moving tribute, however, came from friend and collaborator Per Gessle, who just hours after her passing entrusted his grief to Facebook:

Time passes so quickly. It wasn't that long ago that we spent days and nights in my small apartment in Halmstad listening to the music we loved and sharing impossible dreams. And what a dream we ended up getting to share! Thank you Marie, thank you for everything. You were an exceptional musician, a master of the voice, an extraordinary artist. Thank you for painting my songs in black and white with the most beautiful colors. You were a wonderful friend for over forty years. I am proud, honored and happy to have been able to share so much of your time, talent, warmth, generosity and sense of humor. All my love goes out to you and your family. Things will never be the same.

P.'

The funeral was held privately, attended by family and closest friends, in a location deliberately kept undisclosed. Even King Carl Gustav XI wished to pay tribute to her, stating: "We are deeply moved by the sad news that the singer Marie Fredriksson is no longer with us. For many in our country, including my own family, her music is tied to particularly important life memories."

On January 20, 2020, a concert titled "En Kväll För Marie Fredriksson" ("An Evening For Marie Fredriksson") was held in her honor at the Stora Teatern in Gothenburg, broadcast nationally via streaming five days later at 9pm on SVT1. Musicians and artists who had collaborated with Roxette over the years took turns on stage, including Jonas Isacsson, Eva Dahlgren, Anders Herrlin, Helena Josefsson, and many others. As well as Per Gessle, of course, who turns the page but does not forget.

Rox On… a few clarifications, curiosities and odds and ends

Life goes on, and Per continues down his path alone — not that it's anything new, since he'd already been carrying virtually the entire weight and responsibility for the band's success on his own shoulders from the moment Marie's illness first appeared. Even back at the time of the last album, Good Karma, for instance, he had embarked on a solo tour to promote the record, presenting himself to the public as "Per Gessle Roxette" (the shows took place across Europe between October and November 2018 and drew heavily on the band's catalogue).

In 2016 he gave birth to the enigmatic Gorillaz-style dance project "Mono Mind": the only album officially released so far is Mind Control from 2019, with him working behind the scenes alongside collaborator Helena Josefsson and a cast of fictional, computer-generated characters (Bright Jones, Cookie Carter, Rain Davis and Dr. Robot). It wasn't the first time he'd ventured into the world of animation — it had already happened in 2003 with the Roxette video for "Opportunity Nox", directed by Åkerlund in cartoon style to make up for the absence of Marie Fredriksson, who had just undergone surgery. In 1995, moreover, he had taken part alongside Wilmer X in the project "The Lonely Boys", a novel by Mats Ollson set in 1965 about a young rhythm'n'pop band from southern Sweden: the author asked him to write the music for the book's sequel, and so for a few months the imaginary group became reality.

Coming back to the present day, in 2018 Per sang a duet with Nick Lowe on "Small Town Talk" (which can be found on the English songwriter's album of the same name). In turn, the singer herself, after announcing her retirement, had kept somewhat busy as well: between 2017 and 2018 she released the three non-album singles "Alone Again", "I Want To Go" and "Sing Me A Song", conceived some years before their actual release; her husband Bolyos, however, said he was skeptical about any real intention on Marie's part to write a new album. Like her colleague Gessle, Marie Fredriksson had also collaborated, some time before, with Anna-Frid Lyngstad (together they wrote "Alla Mine Bästa År"/"All My Best Years", found on the 1996 album "Djupa Andetag/Deep Breaths" by the former Abba member), and in June 2013 she sang "Ännur Doftar Kärlek"/"Still The Scent Of Love" on the occasion of the wedding of Princess Madeleine to financier Christopher O'Neill.

Finally, the most anticipated question.

It must have been love?

No, much to the chagrin of the more mischievous fans, who secretly hoped otherwise. In nearly forty years of life on the road in close contact, Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson never had any romantic involvement, not even a small flirtation. The guitarist himself explains why: "Every musician has a private sphere outside the stage, and we Roxette are no exception! I know nobody wants to believe it, which is why Marie and I sometimes had fun joking about it in public. We have completely different personalities, but it was just a way of letting people's imaginations run wild, seeing their reactions, that sort of thing. My real stroke of luck was actually finding a woman (Åsa Nordin) who has been with me since 1984 — that's a long time... almost a quarter of a century, in a sense we belong to each other. She works in travel, and the fact that she got involved in organizing Roxette's tours helped our relationship a great deal. She's often with us travelling around the world, there's no reason for jealousy, and she's not one of those women who stays home complaining: I couldn't imagine my life without her. I was only a little offended when I wasn't invited to Marie's wedding, but certainly not because I wanted to be in her poor husband's place!"

For now, the story of Roxette ends here. It was wonderful to dream, but it's over now…

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