Roxette
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Roxette is a Swedish duo, consisting of pop musicians Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson.
They had several Top 10 hit singles around the globe, including It Must Have Been Love, which featured on the soundtrack to the movie Pretty Woman, The Look, and Joyride.
Their music is best summed up by the title of their greatest hits album - fresh, melodic pop featuring Fredriksson's voice (though "The Look" was sung mainly by Gessle), and Gessle's jangly guitar.
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History
Roxette grew out of the cooperation between the Swedish singers Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson, who both were established artists, and had been friends since 1979. Marie performed with Per's band Gyllene Tider on some tracks of their album The Heartland Café, an album which was later to be released in the USA. Because the name Gyllene Tider was deemed too complex for the American audience, a new name was needed. The name chosen came from a Dr. Feelgood song: Roxette. The Heartland Café, released in 1984, was no great success, and the band split up.
Per went on to do his second solo album, which was not a success either, and at the advice of their mutual record company EMI Per joined up with Marie Fredriksson again, recording a single: "Neverending Love" in 1985. To everyone's surprise the single sky-rocketed to number one in Sweden and abroad, and Per and Marie quickly recorded a full album, using many songs Per had written for his planned third solo album. With the release of Pearls of Passion in 1986 Roxette became a hit in Sweden and later also abroad, and it was quickly followed with a remix album, Dance Passion.
A second real album, Look Sharp! followed in 1988, already sporting the classic Roxette sound, and featuring the hit single "The Look". An American exchange student from Minneapolis brought a copy of the Look Sharp! album home with him during Christmas break, and asked a friend at a local radio station to play it. Convinced he had a hit single in his hands, the station director copied the album and sent the copies to colleague stations, and with success: "The Look" went to #1 on the Billboard Top 100 in April 1989.
The album was quickly officially released by a surprised EMI, and Roxette embarked on a worldwide promotional tour, which rewarded them with a second #1 from the Look Sharp! album, the power ballad "Listen To Your Heart". This was the first #1 which was available only in cassette form: previously all singles had been released on vinyl as well. The third single, "Dressed For Success", went to #14 in July 1989, and the fourth single, "Dangerous" got to #2 in February 1990.
In 1990, a track which was by this time 3 years old, It Must Have Been Love (Christmas For The Broken Hearted), was used in the hit movie Pretty Woman (movie), without the Christmas references. The soundtrack sold over 8 million copies in the USA alone.
Roxette continued their musical assault on the hitsingles of the world in 1991 with Joyride, their third album, which sold 10 million copies worldwide, and prompted a worldwide tour that incorporated 108 concerts.
Tracks recorded during the tour, as well as some tracks which had only been released as singles, appeared on their album Tourism in 1992.
In 1993 Roxette were the first non-English speaking artists to be featured on MTV's "Unplugged" series.
Some of the tracks from that recording, as well as more single-only tracks, were released on the album Rarities, which was only available in Japan and parts of South America.
The two years after their tour were used to record 1994's Crash! Boom! Bang!. A major hit worldwide, the album was not successful only in the USA, allegedly due to mismanagement by EMI.
1995 and 1996 saw the release of two albums: a greatest hits album, Don't Bore Us, Get To The Chorus! (1995), which featured the single versions of tracks, as well as rare songs such as "Almost Unreal", and a Spanish cover-album, Baladas En Español (1996).
For the next three years nothing was heard from Roxette, and rumours went about that they had split up, but they returned in 1999 with a new look and sound and the album Have a Nice Day. Originally criticized by many, including fans, because of the changed sound and the use of techno and house elements, fans nevertheless warmed to the songs, and Roxette were back on the radio in Europe.
Have a Nice Day was followed in 2001 by the album Room Service, an album which was extensively promoted on the Internet. A remix of the song The Centre of the Heart from this album appears in the Dance Dance Revolution music video game series, but charted moderately in places such as Argentina and Switzerland.
After Room Service, two compilation albums appeared: The Ballad Hits and The Pop Hits, which included only a few new songs.
Roxette's future is uncertain, as Marie Fredriksson is as of early 2004 recovering from a brain tumor, and Per Gessle is back with a reunited Gyllene Tider.
Problems
Despite the fact that Roxette have scored many hit singles, their latest albums were, according to some, not promoted properly by their record company and some albums were not even released in the USA at all, or released in altered form: for example Crash! Boom! Bang! was only available as a 10-track disc available from McDonald's in the USA.
Roxette's main fan following is in Scandinavia, as well as the Netherlands and (parts of) South America. To cater to their South American fans, Roxette covered a number of their most popular ballads in Spanish in 1996, but the album Baladas en Español has been criticized because the translator apparently did not take the project seriously, leading to some nonsense lyrics.
Another failure for Roxette was when the song "Almost Unreal" was dropped from the Hocus Pocus movie with Bette Midler and was instead used for the Super Mario Bros movie. The latter was a complete box-office failure.
Discography
- Pearls of Passion (1986, reissued in 1997)
- Dance Passion (1987, vinyl only: remix album).
- Look Sharp! (1988)
- Joyride (1991)
- Tourism (1992)
- Crash! Boom! Bang! (1994)
- Rarities (1995, only released in Japan and South America)
- Don't Bore Us, Get to the Chorus! - Roxette's Greatest Hits (1995)
- Baladas En Español (1996)
- Have a Nice Day (1999)
- Room Service (2001)
- The Ballad Hits (2002)
- The Pop Hits (2003)
See also: List of Swedes in music
External links
- Official Web Site (http://www.roxette.se)
- Official Fanclub (http://www.roxette.nl)
- The Daily Roxette (http://www.dailyroxette.com)
- Roxette & Related Multimedia (http://roxbytes.com)
- Roxette House (http://roxette-house.da.ru)
- Marie Fredriksson (http://tro.boom.ru)cs:Roxette
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