RoxetteBlog

Roxette to be featured in the Swedish Music Hall of Fame 2014

February 6, 2014 by Judith

The Swedish Music Hall Of Fame has announced the first artists to be featured in the Hall of Fame and, of course, Roxette is among them!

The artists featured in the Hall of Fame have had a significant influence on the development of pop music in Sweden. The selection is done by an expert jury formed by various Swedish music journalists. There is one condition in order to be elected: the record debut must have occurred the last 20 years before receiving the distinction. So for this year artists who had their debut in 1994 or earlier were considered.

The exhibition featuring Roxette will open on March 20th and will be available throughout 2014.

These are the first 12 elections to the Hall of Fame:

Evert Taube
Jan Johansson
The Latin Kings
Nationalteatern
Cornelis Vreeswijk
Stina Nordenstam
Ebba Gro?n
Eva Dahlgren
Entombed
Monica Zetterlund
Roxette
ABBA

This is the reason why the jury chose Roxette:

Pop music at its purest involves getting the listener to experience an enhanced sense of life for three or four minutes. Few groups in pop history have used that formula as skilfully and lovingly as Swedish duo Roxette, comprising Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle. Only four Swedish acts have ever topped the US charts. Roxete did it four times. Songs like “The Look,” “Listen To Your Heart,” “It Must Have Been Love” and “Joyride” have become evergreens that never disappear from radio play lists.

The Swedish Music Hall of Fame is located in the same building as ABBA The Museum in Djurgården, Stockholm. Tickets cost 195 SEK and gives you access to both museums.

Congratulations!

Gessle wines are the 3rd best selling celebrity wines

February 1, 2014 by Patrícia Peres

All wines in The Per Gessle Selection – Kurt & Lisa and Furet launched in October 2012, Sommartider in April 2013 – were warmly welcomed on the wine market.

2013 was a perfect year for the Gyllene Tider comeback and launching Sommartider wines. Sommartider became a quite evident component of tons of picnic baskets during the tour in Sweden.

At the same time, all TPGS wines were travelling the world, since many fans brought some bottles / boxes with themselves home after the tour. If you’ve been checking the Facebook page of Per’s wines, you could see that many bottles and boxes were opened already during summer, but lots of fans were waiting patiently to open them on special days, like a birthday or at Xmas.

As the blog ”Ett eko av mat och vin” informs, according to Systembolaget’s sales in liters in 2013, Mr G’s wines are the 3rd best selling celebrity wines. Here is the complete list:

Celebrity	Sales 2013 (litre)
Per Morberg	1479283
Tina Nordström	114812
Per Gessle	111134
Petter	88312
Bo Hagström	85658
Elvis Presley	68528
Motörhead	59088
Bengt Frithiofsson	56832
KISS	54688
Maria Montazami	45272
Ernst Kirchsteiger	32747
Lasse Stafanz	16968
Richard Juhlin	7442
Tomas Ledin	3737
Robert Gustafsson	2650
Slayer	2276
Lill-Babs	2162
Rolling Stones	2019
Sweden Rock	2000
Ernie Els	1816
Ulf Wagner	1604
Carl Jan Granqvist	1418
Kent	1344
Leif Mannerström	1331
David Bowie	749
Rocky	745
Hammerfall	696
Nils Liedholm	469
Francis Ford Coppola	442
Glenn Strömberg	429
Coldplay	367
Penélope Cruz	237
Erik Lallerstedt	180
Marilyn Monroe	134
Plura	22
Markus Aujalay	14
Ernst Billgren	5
Swedish House Maffia	2
Laila Bagge Wahlgrens	0
Total celebrity wine sales 2013:	2247607

So 111,134 liters of TPGS wines were sold last year. Wow! Congrats! No real surprise, but 95% of it was Sommartider rosé and white. Sommartider rosé boxed wine even made it to the Top50 rosé wines at Systembolaget, landing at the 48th place with the sales of 55,954 litres.

Elvis Presley is also selling well, but it seems that Swedes are no fan of David Bowie when it comes to his wine. Whatever. A kind of boost in TPGS sales is surely coming in February, March and April when fans are in Sweden for the Marie Fredriksson tour. Hopefully, Systembolaget is well-prepared for that in the concert cities.

Let’s see what kind of new items 2014 brings to all wine and champagne lover Gessle fans. Until then, some new short video ads like these for Sommartider wines during Vintertider would be fun, don’t you think? 😉

Here’s the list of Roxette concerts we think should be released

January 30, 2014January 28, 2014 by Tomasz

We all got very excited when Per Gessle posted these two posts on the Roxette official Facebook page on the 17th and 25th of January.

FRIDAY UPDATE: Having discussions with EMI (Warner) about re-releasing all VHS/DVD Rox live + documentaries from the past. How about that? Maybe a huge box set? Rox channel on YouTube? Guess the hardest part is to find the stuff in the vaults…. /P. [Post by Roxette Official.]

SATURDAY UPDATE: For your info: Hope to get most of the live VHS & DVD releases from the past out in the open (in top quality) for your insatiable eyes and ears to enjoy. It’s a little messy in the archives at the moment due to the huge EMI/Warner-merger but I’ve got new batteries in my flashlight!. We’re on the case, promise. /P. [Post by Roxette Official.]

At this point all comes down to a simple question: what to release. Or to be even more precise: what Roxette have rights to release and is in a decent audio/picture quality. Per admitted hismelf the hardest part is to find the stuff in the vaults. We have decided to compile a simple to-do, to-find, to-release list, in case Warner forgets how many great concerts Roxette recorded in the past! Let’s do the proper research together – in case we missed something, please drop us a line or two here in the comment section or on our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/RoxetteBlog), so we might save a pearl or two from being forgotten 😉

With numbers (1, 2, 3…) we marked official VHS/laser disc/DVD releases, with letters (A, B, C…) – TV performances/internet broadcasts that could be counted as full scale gigs. For obvious reasons we have excluded all unprofessional, private and bootleg recordings as well as other single TV performances (playbacks or live). We didn’t count in one or two first songs from concert reports on TV as it’s a usual thing that journalists have access to those from each concert (as long as there are cameras in the arena). We are here for live experiences – ONLY!

I’m 1 in a million, you’re 2 of a kind

March 29, 2014January 27, 2014 by Patrícia Peres

No, we won’t do a flashmob every month, BUT Roxette Official reaching 1 million likes on Facebook is definitely something we had to celebrate. Many of us were thinking about this magic number since long, but then Kathie Winn came up with the question if we would really do something. Then we had to speed up, as the page was getting 2000-5000 likes per day.

But what should be the BIG idea? Well, when you’re stuck, besides talking to yourself, it’s always good to go back to the roots. This time to Neverending Love. Is there another phrase that could express our feelings towards Roxette any better? Not really. More than that, there is a perfect line – You’re 1 in a million, we’re 2 of a kind – which Alexandra Neitzel ”translated” into something more fitting for this occasion – I’m 1 in a million, you’re 2 of a kind. Then Basia Konarzewska came up with the idea to take pics of ourselves holding a sign that says this line.

An event was created on Facebook, just like the last time when we had the poster flashmob and many Roxers joined from around the world. We all started thinking about our own photos, how creative they should be, if we should visit the gym before we take the pics or go to the hairdresser, but as I said before, the number of likes on the page was speeding up, so there was not much time left.

Finally, everyone could find out how to appear on the pic, where to write that 1 line and started calculating when Roxette Official might hit the 1 million threshold. Alexandra was doing different scenarios every 10 minutes, so we had a close estimation that 1 million could be reached at about 5 pm on Sunday, 26th Jan. We’ve been reloading the page constantly on this side of the world, alarm clocks were set on the other side and it was even more fun to spend our times on Facebook together with Per, who also seemed to be waiting for the magic moment impatiently. He was posting several times during the day, trying to push the number of likes towards the million. And it worked. However, poor him was busy with posting a cute boyish pic of himself right at the time the page reached 1 million. Quite Gessleish, isn’t it? He took a picture, but it showed 1,000,002. So he was desperately looking for a proper screenshot:

SUNDAY UPDATE #5: Aaaarrgghhh, missed the magic moment. This is what I got. Did you catch the million mark on photo? /P.

One can always count on Roxers, so he got the 1,000,000 screenshot which he could post at last. But before he did that, when the time has come, photos were spreading all over Roxette Official. The result was again: FAB! Many pics were uploaded to the timeline of the page and Per realized it immediately. He started sharing them, but after 4 he found out there would be more, so it made no sense to share them all. One of the pics he shared was Alexandra’s:

Thanks Alexandra and everybody else for making this happen! Splendido! Cheers!
/P&M

So, Per, could you tell us your alias you use in our closed fan groups? 😉 Funny that he posted exactly that pic with this comment. How else could it be if not because of him being a secret member of our groups? Haha.

He wrote a separate post, too after seeing there were more and more pics to come:

THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR FAB PICS RE THE MILLION MARK ON FACEBOOK! VERY NICE INDEED! /P.

We are incredibly glad you’ve been there with us waiting, Mr G. You deserved all the remaining Breaking Bad episodes for this. CONGRATS & keep up the good work on Roxette Official!

Roxers, thanx for joining! Come back tomorrow and we do it again! Well, OK, maybe not tomorrow. Let’s wait a bit more until our next flashmob. 😉

P.S.: No chance to sing Neverending Love with the original lyrics anymore – or at least for some weeks…

Here is a collage of all the 118 photos. You can download it in hi res from .

Update 5:15 pm 27th January:

2 great videos have been made to keep this flashmob in our memories forever. The first one is made by Doogsyify Winn, Kathie’s handy daughter and the 2nd is by another talented video-maker Roxer, Michi Seeber. Thanx for your work with them and sharing them with us!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lGkycAviPA

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3K7OdfSkAs