Per Gessle gig at Hotel Tylösand

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Just having a look at Instagram before going to bed my heart almost stopped when I saw Per Gessle performed at Hotel Tylösand tonight. OMG! He played for the Atea Bootcamp 2017 guests in Solgården, so it was an open-air performance. In the band we can see Helena Josefsson, Christoffer Lundquist, Magnus Börjeson, Clarence Öfwerman and Pelle Alsing.

We don’t know the running order, but these songs were played for sure (as you can see in the instavids and in this summary video):

  • Det hjärta som brinner: 1; 2; 3; 4;
  • Här kommer alla känslorna (på en och samma gång): 1; 2;
  • Tycker om när du tar på mej
  • Dressed For Success: 1; 2; 3;
  • På promenad genom stan: 1; 2;
  • Gå & fiska!: 1; 2; 3;
  • Band introduction
  • Christoffer’s intro to Joyride: Ljudet av ett annat hjärta
  • Joyride: 1;
  • The Look: 1;
  • Sommartider: 1; 2;

Per informs they played 9 songs. These seem to have a big chance to be included in the summer tour setlist as well. Let’s see what happens! Is it July yet???

Some pics from the happening you will find here: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; Per played his guitar picks made for the 2015 Australian tour leg of the Roxette XXX Anniversary Tour.

Still is from this video.

 

Alone Again by Marie Fredriksson out now – a surprise to her fans

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(Updated) As we already informed a couple of days ago, Marie is back with one new song, Alone Again, which you can already buy in digital format or stream on usual platforms.

Here are some links for you:

iTunes
Amazon | Amazon.de
Google Play

Spotify
Deezer

Did you buy it already?

Marie’s Facebook page was updated yesterday with new profile pictures and a message from Marie:

I’m so happy and excited to present my new project to you tomorrow, on my birthday… I hope you’ll like it. Thanks so much for your endless love and support – it means so much to me!

I think it is safe to say that we don’t like it… we love it!!!

On the press release sent out today:

Marie Fredriksson is known for most people as one half of the legendary pop duo Roxette and as soloist with great hit songs like “Ännu doftar kärlek” and “Tro”. The solo career and Roxette have been running in parallel throughout Marie’s career, something that always felt completely obvious. Over the years, the band has toured around the world several times and with 75 million sold albums and countless hits on the world’s hitlists, Roxette is one of the world’s most successful bands ever.

In 2013, Marie released the solo album “Nu!” and in 2015 she released the autobiography “Kärleken till livet”, which she co-wrote with the author Helena von Zweigbergk. Early 2016, 1,5 years after Roxette’s massive 30th Anniversary Tour begun, she and her colleague Per Gessle released the message that, on the advice of Marie’s doctors, they had to cancel the rest of the tour.

Since the decision to completely stopping touring, Marie has found her way back to an incredibly dear old friend: jazz music. What many may not know is that it was with jazz and blues that her lifelong love for music began. She started her professional career as a singer singing jazz at various cafes and clubs. The idea of ??picking up jazz again has followed her for many years and for her own birthday on May 30th it’s finally time. Together with two of Sweden’s absolutely most established musicians in the genre, Magnus Lindgren (saxophone) and Max Schultz (guitar), she now releases her first renowned jazz release “Alone Again”.

“This is something I longed for a long time, and it feels right to do it now. The jazz and the blues have always meant a lot to me, and I love this song.”

A video of Marie, Magnus and Max performing the song was also released along with the press release.

New jazz song by Marie Fredriksson

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Surprise of the year is that a new jazz song will be released by Marie Fredriksson on her birthday, 30th May. It’s released on Amigo, a division of Cosmos Music under exclusive license from Amelia Music AB. The song is 4 m 31 s long and the title is ”Alone Again”. It’s featuring Max Schultz and Magnus Lindgren. Marie already worked together with these 2 musicians in the past. Max Schultz played guitar on Marie’s recordings and the latest cooperation with Magnus Lindgren was the song ”On A Sunday” on Magnus’s album ”Souls” in 2013.

Marie mentioned it earlier that she would love to make a jazz album. Let’s hope there is more to come! So exciting!

Links to the song (more to come): iTunes; Amazon; Google Play;

 

Spending My Time is the Listen To Your Heart of Joyride

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Did you know? 2 extremely important Roxette songs were written on this day 27 years ago. Yeah, Per Gessle, the 8th wonder songwriter wrote Joyride and Spending My Time on the same day. Isn’t he a genius? I mean, look at these 2 songs. Both of them are masterpieces and he could just come up with the power pop song in the morning and the big ballad in the afternoon. He is second to none!

Per says about Joyride:

When I wrote this one Roxette was sitting on top of the world. Three number ones in the US already and more to come. It felt like nothing could go wrong, I was full of self-confidence and every song felt so easy to create.

My wife (then girlfriend) left a note on my piano saying in Swedish: ”Hej din tok, jag älskar dej!”, which means ”Hello you fool, I love you!” It just had to be a chorus.

The writing process went very quickly. So fast I actually wrote ”Spending My Time” together with MP Persson the same afternoon. Hallelujah!

On The Per Gessle Archives you can listen to 2 demos of Joyride: first a less produced, acoustic Joyrider recorded on 22 May 1990 at T&A and a lot more produced Joyride recorded on 23 May 1990 at T&A. Listen to Per and Sven Lindström talking about the demos HERE.

Per about Spending My Time:

The music to ”Spending My Time” was cowritten with my old chap MP Persson. We finished writing it the very same day that I wrote ”Joyride”. Must’ve been May 1990.

I liked the idea of writing a lyric that starts in the morning and ends at night. This was my humble attempt. Great vocal performance by Marie and a super production from Clarence made this one a winner for Roxette.

On The Per Gessle Archives you can listen to the demo to Spending My Time recorded on 24 May 1990 at T&A. Listen to Per and Sven talking about the demo HERE.

Per adds:

I knew we had a great song (MP and I wrote this one together) but the demo always sucked!!! I couldn’t sing it very well, I don’t know why. It was always meant for Marie. She did a tremendous job delivering it. I’m sure it would have become a Top 5 song in the US if EMI wouldn’t have scrapped the entire company and sacked 122 people in the middle of marketing this one. People loved it but radio never got the chance to catch up. The Music Business. You win some, you lose some.

Stills are from the official videos to Joyride and Spending My Time

    

Pics are from ”Songs, Sketches & Reflections”.

Per’s quotes are from his book ”Songs, Sketches & Reflections” and the demo conversations from The Per Gessle Archives, as well as the PG about songs section on RoxBlog.

En vacker kväll poll #8 – En vacker natt

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Now there has been enough time for you all to listen to En vacker natt non-stop and know which songs you would like to listen from the album. So it’s time for the last (solo) poll!

The album is so great (and so short) that it would actually be possible to play it in its entirety every night during the tour. A la Bruce Springsteen with his The River tour or U2 with The Joshua Tree tour this year… what do you think? Quoting from our recent interview with Per … so may there is some hope 🙂

 

PP: – You mentioned in an interview and well… we also know that you’re a fan of short concerts. You would keep the show around 100 minutes. Can we expect a varying setlist from night to night?

PG: – Could be….

Have fun voting (you can choose up to 3 songs but it is still hard – they are all so great!):

[yop_poll id=”28″]