Month: October 2014

Per Gessle and MP at the BMI Awards

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The 2014 BMI London Awards took place at the Dorchester Hotel (Park Lane) tonight. The invitation-only gala recognizes the UK and European songwriters and publishers of the past year’s most-played BMI songs on American radio and television. As Per posted about it earlier today, he and Mats MP Persson were there to receive the Million-Air Awards for Listen To Your Heart and It Must Have Been Love for the songs being played more than 5 million times each. Per has been prepared for this event since at least a year ago, when he posted a pic of him and MP from the 2005 gala. 5 million plays! Sounds fab, doesn’t it! I mean it’s really huge! Just to make it easier (or harder) to imagine, 5 million plays of LTYH means appr. 50 years if it were constantly played and 5 million plays of IMHBL means appr. 41 years. Amazing!

In the meantime, LTYH video is heading for 40 million views on YouTube, while IMHBL is heading for 45 million. Millions here and there and everywhere. Hats off! Before the gala, Per posted both videos (1, 2) on Roxette Official with these words:

OVER five million radioplays in the US. Happy. Proud. Thanx everyone for listening! /P.

BMI_2014
Check the photo on BMI’s website!

Per says in a short BMI interview:

I hope we’re good role models for the new generation.

 

One more short PG interview has been uploaded by BMI on 27th October. Check it out by clicking HERE.

 

BMI Awards
MP, Marie and Per at the BMI Awards gala in 2005. Pic from BMI.

1 million plays earlier, It Must Have Been Love got the BMI Million-Air Award for 4 million plays in 2005. Marie and Per were there at the gala. You’ll find some pics here. You can watch a video with Per from that year about how he started and another about how he writes.

Listen To Your Heart got the award for 4 million plays 3 years later, in 2008. Here you will find a pic and here a video with Per and MP. Per says:

It’s great! I mean this is for 4 million airplays. It’s the second time I’m part of it. This is for Listen To Your Heart, last time it was for It Must Have Been Love. It’s just amazing! Amazing! I have to pinch my arm. It’s just great!

 

Photos from the event:

Photos on Roxette Official and PER GESSLE OFFICIAL: 1, 2, 3, 4,

rexfeatures.com photos

contactmusic.com

entertainment.ie

tipsimages.it: 1, 2, 3

monstersandcritics.com: 1, 2, 3

musikindustrin.se article

 

Per Gessle in a documentary about Henry Diltz

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Henry Diltz‘s name surely rings a bell. He is a legendary rock photographer and has taken many famous photos of e.g. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, etc. He even took photos for Roxette’s Tourism album and Per has some of his pics on display at Hotel Tylösand.

Now a documentary is in progress about Henry Diltz’s story and Per will also talk about him in it. As Janolof Fritze, director of the documentary informs:

A few days ago we got Per Gessle from Roxette in front of the camera. In the documentary “Rock Photographer Henry Diltz – famous among the famous” Per is talking about Henry as a good friend and a great photographer. Per Gessle is one of 30 iconic music artists featured in the 90 minutes documentary that we hope to release in the beginning of 2015.

There is already a trailer to the docu, in which you can see Mr G for 6 seconds! Click HERE or on the screenshot to watch it! Per appears at about 00:50. He says:

A good photographer like Henry, he knows what he is doing. I don’t, you know. I just take snapshots.

PG_in_the_Henry_Diltz_docu

 

As Per informed on Roxette Official, there was a Tres Hombres Art exhibition opening for Terry O’Neill‘s photos on 7th October at Hotel Diplomat. It seems that after the event they went on to Uppsala to meet Henry, since he has an exhibition of his photos during the Uppsala Guitar Festival. There they showed how to shoot a proper selfie of 4. 😉

 

PG_selfie
Henry Diltz, Terry O’Neill, Åsa Gessle, Per Gessle

 

Poll results! Roxette fans would love to hear these songs live!

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banner votes

After weeks of voting.. here are the results! This is the Top 10 of songs that fans woud love to hear live in the next Roxette tour, which starts soon! Some of them were never played live, some have been but long long time ago.

1. A Thing About You – 275
2. Almost Unreal – 172
3. (Do You Get) Excited – 160
4. Paint – 155
5. June Afternoon – 119
6. The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye – 97
7. What’s She Like – 84
8. Touched By The Hand Of God – 78
9. Speak To Me – 79
10. The Rain – 65

Thank you very much  for participating. Now let’s just cross our fingers and hope that one (or two?) of these songs makes it to the setlist.

A Thing About You – video

Almost Unreal – Live

(Do You Get) Excited? – Live

Paint – Live

You can check out all results here.

Marie Fredriksson writes music for a movie

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MF_by_Pernilla_Pettersson
Photo of Marie by Pernilla Pettersson

You remember Marie Fredriksson‘s Sista sommarens vals video, don’t you? It was directed by Emil Jonsvik. Why am I mentioning this video now? It’s because today the director posted a photo of Marie on his Instagram profile saying that she is writing music for his new movie. It sounds quite exciting!

I’ve contacted Emil to ask some details about this project, but he kindly replied it’s a bit too early to share more info. He could only tell that Marie wrote 1 song for the movie and the film will represent Sweden in China at the beginning of November and it is planned to be premiered in Sweden early 2015 and after that worldwide.

Title of the movie is Krigarnas ö (The Name of The Game) and it’s a drama. Story:

On an idyllic archipelago island Peter will spend a few days together with his daughter Sandra in an attempt to catch up on lost times. They have barely met since the tragic suicide of his son five years earlier and Peter has been struggling to accept the loss of his own child. When on the island Sandra meets a group of youngsters who entice her with both friendship as well as romance but she soon finds herself deeply involved in a dangerous game, a game they call the Warrior. They give each other missions and dares that have to be completed in order to receive the desirable title – Warrior. Peter, who discovers what they are up to, cannot afford to lose Sandra but chooses to not bring this to the attention of the police and keeps it from friends and the daughter’s mother. When the daughter disappears deeper and deeper into the game he feels as if there is no other choice than to strike back and join their game with dire consequences to follow. Peter is determined – he will come home with his daughter and is prepared to go far for the one that he loves the most.

Here you can watch the trailer to the movie. Looking very much forward to the film and hearing that one song of Marie!

Our earlier interview with Emil about the shooting of Sista sommarens vals you can read here.

Per Gessle at the Göteborg Book Fair – the videos

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PG_20140928If you have appr. 40-50 minutes between listening to The Per Gessle Archives and reading the books, you might want to check some videos from the book fair seminars. Unfortunately, there was no proper video recording of the complete seminars, so I thought I would put together the parts I recorded. Sorry for my sometimes shaking hands – mainly at the beginning of the Friday session, but I’m not a pro when it comes to taking videos. I left the rough cuts between the parts in, not to miss any milliseconds owing to transitions. 2-3 minutes of both videos I’ve already shared in the book fair review articles (chapter 1 and chapter 2), but now you’ll be able to watch 17m 32s (appr. 1/3) of the Friday seminar (pop quiz with Per Gessle, Sven Lindström and Nisse Hellberg) and 19m 57s (appr. 2/3) of the Sunday session where Jan Gradvall interviewed Per about songwriting. I hope your eyes won’t get hurt, but in the latter video the projected background is vibrating every now and then. Or was it Per’s aura? Either way, both seminars were very exciting and entertaining. Make sure you check the part where Per talks about the upcoming Roxette tour and thanks the fans for always being around, even in the seminar audience (Sunday seminar at about 18:35).

We are grateful to have all these guys following us everywhere. It’s awesome!

Friday seminar 26th September (in case the YouTube link doesn’t work for you because of the pop quiz songs’ copyrights, try to watch it HERE on Dailymotion):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYws6w5X_Q

 

Sunday seminar 28th September:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec6-15y-6vU

 

I felt so sorry that my camera missed the Flickorna på TV2 part of the conversation on Sunday, because it was so very funny, but fortunately, Chrissie Röhrs recorded that part, so you can watch how the double meaning of words kicked in this time (starts at 9:20). Turn someone on or switch the TV on à la PG!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ValjtwZ6980