Roxette
Sweden presented the world with many talents, including a world-famous duo Roxette, which can not be left unnoted. It was formed and started its music career in 1984. The initiator of the band’s creation was a music label EMI, which offered Per Gessle, a guitarist, vocalist, and song-writer, who was known earlier due to his participation in the group Gyllene Tider and his solo projects, to cooperate with Marie Fredriksson. Marie as well as her companion was not a new artist. Before the creation of Roxette, she had solo performances and sang as a member of the music band.
The idea to unite two talents in one team turned to be rather successful and profitable. Roxette’s debut album, entitled Pearls of Passion, was released in 1986. In the same year, in order to present the record and made Roxette’s works popular, the band embarked on a tour in the home country and its audience met the group with a great enthusiasm.
Two years later, the band released the second album Look sharp! Swedish music fans were impressed by an original pop-rock style, performance, and vocal of the duo’s members. But beyond the country Roxette had not been popular yet. Moreover, only a few people heard about this duet beyond Sweden. The situation had to be changed in a short period of time. An absolute fortune helped here – an American visitant bought a CD of Roxette and gave it to a radio DJ of his native land. The DJ just fell in love with one of the songs and played it on the radio every day, promoting, in such a way, the popularity of Roxette. In fact, a song “The Look” reached the top of American charts and was played in many European countries. In 1989, the Swedish duet had the first European tour already.
In 1990, when the sales of the first album exceeded 8 million copies, Roxette’s members decided to carry out a world tour. During this tour, musicians visited countries of South and North America and played a great number of concerts in Australia and countries of Europe. In total, they gave over a hundred concerts in various cities and countries and won, finally, the popularity, which both singers dreamt about for a long time.
The collection of concert records, released in 1992, was also popular with Roxette’s fans worldwide. A year later, the duet’s single “Almost unreal” reached the top of European and American charts. Making much effort to stay there and not disappoint their fans, The Swedish duo released the next album and began to plan a new world tour, which took place in 1994. During the tour, they traveled throughout all continents of the planet but the duo passed USA and disappointed their American fans in earnest.
This was followed by a long break, during which Roxette’s members worked at their own projects trying to build a solo career. But, in spite of all rumors, the group did not disband. Per and Marie finally blended their forces for conquering the tops of the world glory. They have a list of superhits, which topped and are still topping the world charts; 40 videoclips of high quality were made to their songs, working with directors Okerlund and Korben, who knew each other by the clips of Madonna and Depeсhe Mode. At different time, they earned a lot of Grammy Awards, including an award for The Best Band, The Best Video (Joyride, 1991), and for The Best Song and The Album of the Year.
In 2011, Roxette released an album Charm School and, despite Marie’s problems with health, they are not going to stop their career.
