Per Gessle – Småstadsprat video

Per Gessle’s first single off his upcoming album was released on 17th March. A duet with Lars Winnerbäck. We already knew it on 7th April that a video will also be released to Småstadsprat, as Per Gessle posted about it on his Facebook page:

Yepp. Småstadsprat-video klar. Grymt cool. Kommer strax. /P.

Translation: Voila. Småstadsprat-video clip signed, sealed and delivered. Very nice indeed. Out before you know it. /P.

We all hoped to see Per himself in the video, but we were also kind of sure there would be more tussilagos in it than PG. The video was published on 21st April. It’s a cartoon created by Emil Gustafsson Ryderup. Even if it doesn’t contain any PG images, it turned out to be beautiful. Beautiful but so sad at the same time. It fits the lyrics and the melody perfectly.

As Emil told Göteborgs-Posten, first he said no to doing a video for ”an artist”, because he was too busy. Then it turned out it would have been a video for a Per Gessle song and he got anxious. He says:

He is one of the Swedish music geniuses, one of the absolute greatest and that’s when anxiety kicked in that I missed it. Gessle has definitely been in the frontline of our country’s music history. He has always been around in a certain way and I have to admit that sometimes in the dark times of my life I have listened to “It Must Have Been Love”.

Thanks to Emil’s employers, he could get 3 weeks off for making the video. It was an intensive period for him, to interpret the lyrics into his drawings. He says it’s a story of love that doesn’t disappear, about those who leave a small town and those who do not. He had a style in mind inspired by the ‘50s and ‘60s and UPA animation studio. A bit of “Mr. Magoo” style, but still with Emil’s character in it.

At the beginning, Emil sent some still images and a synopsis to the record company and he got green light to go on with it. Emil says it was more like he gathered the ingredients for a cake and hoped it would turn out right in the end. For example, he made the backgrounds last. All involved were satisfied with the result and the video is now out in public. Emil tells Göteborgs-Posten that he is quite pleased and that Per Gessle said yes to Emil Gustafsson Ryderup is fun and feels great. He is very happy that he managed to do this in the end.

Congrats and well done, Emil! The video can be watched on Per’s YouTube channel, HERE.

Roxette announce 3rd single and video contest

Roxette have announced today that the 3rd single from their latest album, Good Karma will be ”Why Don’t You Bring Me Flowers?”. It was no real surprise, since Mr. G already talked about it in the interview we did with him some months ago:

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Addeboy vs Cliff have just finished a fab uptempo version of ”Why Don’t You Bring Me Flowers?”. A song of mine done in Addeboy vs Cliff-style. It will hopefully be released later this year.

So the time has come. Better said, the time will come on 4th November, as the release date is set to that Friday according to Ginza.

But it’s not just a simple single release (on CD and in digital form). Marie and Per ask you to be creative and they give you a chance to appear in the official video to the song. All you have to do is record a 10-20 seconds video of yourself, friends or a situation to where you associate to the song and upload here. You don’t have much time to do that though. The deadline is next Friday, 21st October. For more details you should check out the terms and conditions. Make sure you use #WhyDontYouBringMeFlowers when you upload your video to any social media site.

The winner submissions will be part of the official video. It’s a nice idea. And hey, it means there will be an official video, not just a lyrics video. Does it also mean that besides the parts with the winner clips there will be Marie and Per in the video as well? Good question… Not much time left until we see what happens. Fingers crossed for some really creative clips and a fab end result! Good luck to all participating Roxers!

 

What happened to the “It just happens” video?

It’s been 36 days since the release of the first single off “Good Karma” – “It just happens”. We got an official lyrics video which has around 260.000 views by now (the video which went live for Germany has 30.000 views so far). This lyrics video has been published and posted on Facebook shortly after the song was out. But we know for sure that there was a video shooting for a “proper” video – proper meaning it includes Per and Marie.

What we know so far is that a video has been shot between March 21st and March 28th – Per confirmed this in an interview on P4 Halland a week before the shooting. We also assume that back then the promo shots for the album must have taken place.

We know that on April 1st (certainly it wasn’t meant as April fools) they were still busy “preparing the new video”.

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Two weeks later, on April 16th, Per reminded us of the video and wrote this:

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Another two weeks later, on April 29th, The Daily Roxette asked on Twitter about the video and Per replied it will be out SOON. Sure, we know enough about Per’s understanding of the way “soon”, but another two tweeks later we are still waiting and there are some questions coming up:

1.) I Does it make sense to release a video for a single that basically flopped more than five weeks later (in case it was out TODAY which probably won’t happen) or even more?

2.) Why didn’t they release it only some days after the single – many artists do these, but I haven’t heard about one who waits more than a MONTH with it, especially not when the single isn’t a mega seller.

3.) What happened? Technical issues, human failure, Marie’s news made it impossible to release it or simply a promo strategy gone wrong?

Having discussed this topic on some Facebook walls and in Facebook groups some ideas came up to save the video from the trash can:

1.) Use the footage for the second single. Just cut what you filmed into something new and ignore the different lyrics.

2.) Release the video together with the album on June 3rd.

3.) Release the single again with the proper video and put some money into promoting the song and getting it to the radio stations.

Any other suggestions how to release the video after months of the single release without looking a bit bad?

Roxette Diaries – a review!

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Photo: Nico Radoi

Today was the day – time to watch the Roxette diaries. Yes, the film is out for a while now, but I didn’t bother to watch it any earlier since I had ordered the wrong version without English subtitles and I really didn’t want to watch it without them. Waking up today I decided to give it a try. My Swedish is not the best, but I learned enough from Per, Marie and Kent that I can at least read it very good. So I switched on the Swedish subtitles and the fun began.

It took me two and a half minutes to get into tour mood again. There are two simple reasons for me: There’s a very special energy between Per and Marie in the beginning and it lasts until 1993, I think. It feels very special to watch both of them interact. You can feel in every scene how much fun they had in the 80’s and in the early 90’s. They just did what they know best: music. And they had fun together, all of them. And this is maybe what most fans search or long for the most: They want to be sure that their favourite band is nothing but a big family, having fun together, on and off stage, create great music and conquer the world. Yes – this movie transports this feeling very well. At least the first hour. The whole band is just easygoing, lighthearted, happy, untroubled. My heart leapt watching this! And I remembered how much I love them – and we have a silver wedding this year. It’s been 25 years of unconditional love of my part this year. Can this be called the love of my life then?

The second reason why I suddenly can’t wait for June to roll on: I suddenly remembered that they still have an awful lot to give. They are not finished yet. Seven years have been stolen off them. Seven years of nothingness and yet seven years time to heal a strained friendship. I need to see more of this healed relationship between them. It has never been nicer to watch them on stage together.

And what I implied here I honestly mean: While in the beginning Marie and Per seem to be a unit, they certainly are no longer from 1993 on. Of course, this can be due to the cutting of the film, but did anyone else notice that Marie is almost not to be seen in the last 30 minutes of the film?

There’s one scene at the end where someone asks (is it Per?): “Where is Marie?” right before a performance. Yes, folks, I wondered the same. Where was she? And someone else in the film replies: “Ingen aning.” No idea. I had no clue either.

What we all knew to be true suddenly becomes real – yes, their friendship turned from friendship to business somewhen between 1992 and 1993. There’s no way to deny it. There’s no more fun around. And this is the shocking part of the diaries: Interviews, travelling, TV shows, promotion, concerts – there’s a 90 minute development of wearout to witness. It almost broke my heart to watch this. Smiles got less, fun got less, friendship almost not detectable.

But thinking about the recent years they gave to us, I can only say: We are the luckiest fans in the world. I don’t know how they did it, maybe it’s just the happiness, the gratefulness to have survived this bad illness Marie had, but they certainly overcame their problems and enjoy their time together again. And it’s something different now, when Marie isn’t doing interviews or doing all the other promo crap stuff that comes with being a pop star. We all do understand it and maybe we even understand it more when we know now what it did to them in the early 90’s.

Yet, this is a brilliant movie and my only criticism would be that there were too many concert parts at the end. I would have loved to see more of the Tourism and Crash!Boom!Bang! recordings. Maybe we get to see the rest of it soon. Per’s “soon” would suffice here, though. And I would also love to see the 2009-2016 footage. You know why – just to get me in the tour mood again and again and make me fall in love with them again and again. Nothing and nobody compares to Marie and Per.

Video to the new Roxette single

As you could read in our article this morning, Per starts a radio podcast on 24th March. A great chance to practice your Swedish by listening to 2 nerds chatting about music.

Today Per visited Swedish Radio P4 Halland and talked about the podcast. In the short interview he also mentioned that he is busy with other things as well. Besides that he started his own record label Space Station 12, there are also a lot of things happening around Roxette. The new album is out in summer, the single is out in April and he confirmed there will be a video to the single which they are shooting next week. Too cool!

Another interesting thing Mr. G mentioned is that they are playing 18 shows in Europe this summer. We know about 14 dates so far, so there are at least 4 more to come. Sounds promising!

Listen to Per HERE!

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