Sven Lindström welcomes Per Gessle back to Sweden after the South American tour leg in the May episode of Nordic Rox. The guys are sitting in sunny Halmstad on a beautiful day.

Per has been touring with Roxette during the 40th anniversary year. Time flies when you’re having fun, he says. And he did have fun in South America. It’s a beautiful place, he loves to go there and play there. Lots of noise and loud people everywhere, and love and affection as well. The guys will dive into some of the tour memories, but before that they kick off the show with a smile. Smile by Atomic Swing is the first song they play. It’s from their debut album that came out in 1993.

Final Gørl by Norwegian Sløtface is next, a power pop punk band or whatever you want to label it, from Stavanger, a great city in Norway. Then comes Lies by Peter Bjorn and John.

Sven is curious which countries Per & Co. went to in South America. Mr. G informs that they played Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. Sven wants to know how it was to get back to South America after so many years. Per says it was amazing. They have a new singer in the band, Lena Philipsson and it’s a new experience for everyone. But it was great. They had 12,000 people in Buenos Aires and 9,000 people in Santiago. The reception is tremendous. It’s like time stood still in a way. There are still a lot of people hanging outside the hotels and it’s really cool.

40 years is a long time in this business, so PG is very honored and privileged to still be able to do this after all these years. The heyday of Roxette, of course, was from 1988 until 1995. 1989 internationally, but in 1988 they had a big breakthrough in Scandinavia. So South America came pretty early. The first tour they did there was in 1991-92 with the Joyride album and they immediately started to play football stadiums.

They guys play a song taken from the Joyride album. The track is on the tour setlist as well. Per knows what song Sven picked, it’s always he who picks the Roxette songs on the show. It’s Fading Like A Flower, a big song for Roxette. It was No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1991 and it’s still a crowd pleaser.

Sven remembers being in South America watching Roxette play there in 2012, and he was amazed because he wasn’t really ready for the devoted fan base they had there. People waiting at airports and the fans everywhere. It’s pretty crazy still, Per says. Especially in South America, people show their emotions a lot. It’s just wonderful to be there from a performer’s point of view. It’s just great to do shows for those people. Sven is curious if it is different as opposed to touring in Europe, for example. Per says it depends on where in Europe you go. But PG usually says that the farther north you go, the calmer the audience is. And the farther south you go, the more temperamental the audience becomes. Latin America is just fantastic. He loves it there and he loves those cities. Montevideo is fantastic, Santiago is great, Buenos Aires is crazy. There is like an old European touch to it still, which you don’t really find in Europe that much anymore. Sven agrees, Buenos Aires really is a fascinating city. And there is great food and great wine. Sven asks Per if there are any noticeable differences between Buenos Aires and Rio and Santiago. Generally speaking, Rio is a little bit more touristy than São Paulo in Brazil. São Paulo, for Per, is a little bit more arty. But these are big cities and you are on tour, so you spend a lot of time in the hotels and in the arenas.

The next Roxette song also ended up on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart on No. 2 and it was No. 1 on Cashbox. It’s Dangerous from the Look Sharp! album. It’s still also on the setlist. It’s a really wonderful song. Per wrote it just after they released the first Roxette album. Marie didn’t like it, so they skipped it for a very long time. But then Mr. G convinced her that it had something. At the end of the day, many, many, many, many years later, Per overheard an interview Marie did and she said it was her favourite Roxette song. There you go! Haha. The revenge!

Rocket Scientist by Teddybears is next. Then comes Going Home by Sophie Zelmani.

Sven asks Per what’s up next for Roxette. They continue touring this 40th anniversary throughout the year. They are going to do about 20 shows in Europe starting in May. So it’s a pretty busy summer. There are lots of German dates and they play in Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland. Name it, you got it. Hopefully, this tour will continue to North America as well, the US and Canada. The last time they played in the States was 2012. Sven saw them in Boston. They also played the Beacon Theatre in New York. It would be fantastic to go back on this tour.

Another Roxette song is coming up on Nordic Rox. Church Of Your Heart is from the Joyride album. The vinyl version of Joyride didn’t include it at all, but it was available on the CD. For some reason, their American record label liked it and they wanted to release it as a single. So they did. They made a video as well and it became a decent hit in the States, and eventually, also a single in the rest of the world. It was more of a leftover for Roxette. In those days you squeezed more songs into a CD, because you had more space. And you wanted to keep every vinyl side to a maximum of 20 minutes for the sound quality, which Per thinks is great, because if you make an album that’s 40 minutes, that’s enough. Sven always liked this song, because he thought it was a slightly relaxed power pop side of Roxette. It made him think of Tom Petty. Per says they love Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They got this Rickenbacker 12-string guitar, so it’s indeed got that sort of style. It’s a three chord thing.

The fourth Roxette song on the show is taken from the Have A Nice Day album. This one is a newly released version called The Monk Version. Sven turns to Per and says he needs to explain it. The song is called Wish I Could Fly and The Monk Version is when they mixed this song, they did different alternatives. This particular version included some sort of monks singing. However, they were the monks. Haha. They were singing the outro of the song in this monk style. It’s been available on 12-inch singles in the past. A lot of people like it and Sven picked it, so PG thinks Sven must like it too. Sven says he was intrigued by the title. The song is a sizable hit in Europe and a big one in the UK.

Shoreline by Anna Ternheim is next, then Inner City Ghosts by Johnossi wraps up the program.

Sven and Per thank the listeners for joining them and they say goodbye. The show ends with Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom, as usual.

Still is from the Bag Of Trix talks recorded by Anders Roos.

Thanks for your support, Sven!

Sven Lindström and Per Gessle are back on the airwaves with the final countdown of the best songs of the Swedish ’90s in the April episode of Nordic Rox. Positions from No. 5 to 1 are played on the show.

The guys have been struggling through 30 songs to finally get to the top of the list. Sven asks Per how he feels about the top 5. Mr. G thinks it’s a tough competition up there, but these are 5 great songs.

Before that, they take a trip to the garage and they find The Sinners there. When She Lies is played by the band. Then comes The One You Need by Miller Moon from Malmö. Surfway by Sydkraft (south power – Per translates) is next. They came from Halmstad and this song is from 1978. This was the first single they ever made. Sven thinks it’s a cool song. He remembers Per saying back in the days when he had Gyllene Tider – which the guys will come back to later on in the show – that Sydkraft came from Halmstad and they were signed to EMI, so that made PG think that GT could never be signed by EMI, because they can’t have two bands from this ridiculous little town on the west coast. But they could. Gyllene Tider eventually wound up on EMI, so they became label mates with Sydkraft.

The guys are moving back in time to one of their favourite parts of the show, where they have a look at what was buzzing on the Swedish top charts back in the days. Approximately 60 years ago this week, they had a big song on the radio in Sweden called Sunny Girl by the Hep Stars. It was written by Benny Andersson who eventually became one of the Bs in ABBA. Haha. This is one of his first compositions and it was a major song in Sweden over the summer of 1966. Sven suggests if you haven’t heard the Hep Stars before, listen to 20-something Benny Andersson and see if you can hear traces of the future ABBA sounds there.

The next song is Above The Candystore by Paola. Per thinks it’s a fantastic song, produced and written by Klas Åhlund who also was a member of Teddybears and produced and wrote a lot of stuff for Robyn, for instance. Paola was a great pop singer and this song was forgotten, not getting the credit it deserves, Sven says. Per loves this track. He played it a lot.

This brings the guys to the top 5 of their best of the Swedish ’90s list. No. 5 is a song called Tuesday Afternoon by Stonecake from 1991. Sven always had the feeling that Paul McCartney would have loved to have written this one. Per confirms it was very much influenced by his style.

No. 4 is one of the most successful Swedish bands ever internationally and a great band as well. It wasn’t easy to pick a song from The Cardigans because they have so many, especially in the ’90s. Sven and Per stuck with My Favourite Game. Per thinks it’s a great one. Sven agrees it’s a cool track. It was written by Peter Svensson and produced by Tore Johansson. It’s homegrown Swedish stuff, which made a lot of Japanese fans fill the streets in Malmö suddenly. The Cardigans were very big in Japan.

In the bronze position they are changing language. More or less everyone in Swedish bands was singing in English in the ’90s. But here is a bold fighter for the Swedish language. It’s the band PG was in at the time, Gyllene Tider. Det är över nu (It’s over now). That sounds a bit depressive, but in fact, the band was just kicking off again. GT started in the late ’70s and broke up in 1984, and then they came back in the mid ’90s. This was actually the comeback single in ’95. Per wrote it in a dressing room in Osaka, Japan on the Roxette Crash! Boom! Bang! tour. It was the first time they had worked with producer Michael Ilbert, who changed their sound to be a little more raw and heavier. Sven agrees, they sounded tougher and rougher. This one became a massive comeback for Gyllene Tider. It became the opening for big tours that would happen in the next two decades for this little band from Halmstad. Then there were several comebacks over the years, like every fifth year, drawing record audiences to the shows.

No. 2 is Driving One Of Your Cars by Lisa Miskovsky, a girl from the north. She made some fantastic tracks in the ’90s. This is one of Per’s favourite songs. It definitely deserves the runner-up position on this chart.

The winner is one of the few songs that Sven and Per agree on. It’s a band that started in the early ’90s and became famous and sort of shaped the sound of the Swedish ’90s. They made their debut album, A Car Crash In The Blue, in 1993 that had this single, Stone Me Into The Groove. And the band is… Atomic Swing. They sounded like nothing else. The singer, Niclas Frisk, had a lot to do with that, but the whole sound was original. It was very special at the time and he was the writer as well, so he made some fantastic music. It’s a very well-deserved number one position that they put themselves on in this chart. It’s timeless pop music by a highly original band. They sounded terrific.

Bad Blood by Per + Lena is played next, then comes Holiday Inn by Adiam Dymott and All My Senses by Mando Diao.

Sven and Per thank the listeners for joining them and they say goodbye. The show ends with Cigarettes by Anita Lindblom, as usual.

Pic by Anders Roos

Thanks for your support, Sven!