Late Night Concert is a collaboration between Live Nation and TV4, which premiered this spring and was recorded at an empty Gröna Lund. The format was born out of the current situation when live music has fallen silent when concerts have been forced to scale down and is based on the idea of spreading live music out into the country and home to the TV couches.
The second season was recorded at Cirkus in Stockholm without an audience and is broadcast on TV4. The program can also be seen on TV4 Play and C More.
Per Gessle’s Late Night Concert day was 16th December. You can watch it HERE (if you live in the EU or can use VPN)! When we are on tour, we expect more and more people to attend the shows and now… we can be happy for concerts where there is literally no one in the audience. How weird this 2020 is. At the same time, we can be grateful that at least this way we can enjoy Mr. G’s performance. Who knows when it will be possible to go on tour again.
Per chose to perform an unplugged set and what a great decision it was! It’s not the first time he plays unplugged. We all remember MTV Unplugged from 1993. It happened at the same place, Cirkus in Stockholm and Mr. G was wearing a similar wild cat shirt. Now there were less instruments and no John Lennon sunglasses.
Helena Josefsson, Clarence Öfwerman, Christoffer Lundquist and Magnus Börjeson joined Per on stage. They played 9 songs (2 Roxette, 1 Gyllene Tider, 6 Per solo).
Setlist
- På promenad genom stan
- Småstadsprat
- Listen To Your Heart
- Tycker om när du tar på mej
- Ömhet
- I din hand
- Segla på ett moln
- Honung och guld
- It Must Have Been Love (Christmas for the Broken Hearted)
All songs sounded wonderful in this arrangement. I’m a fan of rock concerts and jumping in the crowd, but hey, I want this acoustic set in real life! Not the first time I’m dreaming about an acoustic tour, but now I crave it even more. I mean Per’s vocals were so emotional and Helena was singing beautifully and Clarence, Chris and Magnus were playing so softly, all that absolutely fit the intimate atmosphere. 3 songs put me into tears. Listen To Your Heart… before you tell her goodbye… Gosh… Then Segla på ett moln for whatever reason and then of course, It Must Have Been Love. Oh well, music and its effects. It was amazing to hear songs live from Per’s latest solo album, Gammal kärlek rostar aldrig.
Between Småstadsprat and Listen To Your Heart Per talked about his MTV Unplugged 1993 experience. He said he played Cirkus several times, but he remembers most of all the MTV recording. They were the first non-English or non-American band that was invited to play on the program. He remembers that he was wearing a leopard shirt back then and that’s why he is wearing a leopard shirt now, to celebrate it.
Before playing Ömhet, Mr. G talked about being isolated due to the pandemic and that he thought to record an album based on his old material written in the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s. His idea was to play all instruments himself to make it as personal as possible. He tried to breathe new life into those old songs. He thinks it became a pretty cool album.
Before It Must Have Been Love, Per talked about the story of it. He says it’s a super special song. It started out as a Christmas song in 1987 and it was a success in Sweden. The story behind is that their German record label advised them to write a Christmas song so they might get airplay on German radio, because they couldn’t manage it with their debut album, Pearls of Passion. So they recorded IMHBL, presented it to the German, but they didn’t like it. Then in 1990 they were asked to cooperate in the soundtrack of a movie then called 3000. They were travelling around the world with Roxette then and didn’t have time to record a new song. They thought to use IMHBL, just changing Christmas day to winter’s day in the lyrics, recorded a new intro and mixed it differently. The title of the movie was changed to Pretty Woman and became a huge success. IMHBL became Roxette’s probably biggest hit.
The concert was beautifully recorded from great camera angles. I could have lived without the ads in between the songs and it’s always better to see the support acts before the main act comes on stage, but other than that, concentrating solely on the PERformance itself, it was really a fab recording.
Dear Covid-19, don’t you dare ruin our 2021 as well! Besides many other things in a so called normal life, we need tours too!
Thanks a lot to Live Nation and TV4 for bringing Per Gessle into our living rooms and thanks Mr. G & Co. for the beautiful interpretation of these 9 songs. We want more of this! I just had to watch it again right after it ended. And I guess I will give it some more plays. Did I mention it was B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L.???
Stills are from the program.
Per Gessle’s opinion about the recordings:
Had a blast recording the Unplugged Late Night Concert at Cirkus in Sthlm. My favourite players and singers around me. Wunderbar.
Missed you guys out there, of course, but that’s the way it is on Mother Earth right now. Hope you liked it too and didn’t find too slow or too cozy. I wanted it to be intimate since we couldn’t interact with any audience.
If you missed it I’m sure you can catch it on TV4 Play. Love to you all! Stay safe + sound! /P.
