Roxers’ favourite Good Karma tracks

You might remember Per’s Sunday reflection post. He asked which your favourite song is on Roxette’s brand new album, Good Karma.

SUNDAY REFLECTION. Howdy folks. So, the mighty Good Karma’s been out a week by now. Great reception. Thanks. One thing: what’s your favourite song? Just one, pls. Otherwise I’ll get confused! Cheers, P.

It was really hard for all of us to pick only one track, because all songs on the album are dear to most of us and our favourites are changing day by day or even hour by hour. Checking the comments under the post, some are having an album with exclusive extra tracks, like Joyride, The Look, Vulnerable and So Far Away, haha. Sticking to the real Good Karma songs, the title track seems to be the absolute winner. How about a third single soon? 😉

gk_roxers_faves

 

Good Karma entered the Swedish charts at No. 1 and No. 2!

Roxette’s new album, Good Karma was released on 3rd June and so it’s the first week we can see it on the Swedish charts. The record entered at No. 2 on the album charts and at No. 1 on the vinyl charts! Yay! Fantastic news!

GK_entered_the_charts

Let’s have a look back on Roxette’s studio albums, at which position they entered the Swedish charts. Except for Pearls Of Passion, Charm School and Travelling, all other albums popped up on the album charts at No. 1, all 6 of them keeping the position for several weeks.

Pearls Of Passion
Entered the charts at No. 4 on 19th November 1986. Highest position was No. 2.

Look Sharp!
Entered the charts at No. 1 on 2nd November 1988.

Joyride
Entered the charts at No. 1 on 10th April 1991.

Tourism
Entered the charts at No. 1 on 16th September 1992.

Crash! Boom Bang!
Entered the charts at No. 1 on 15th April 1994.

Have A Nice Day
Entered the charts at No. 1 on 4th March 1999.

Room Service
Entered the charts at No. 1 on 12th April 2001.

Charm School
Entered the charts at No. 2 on 18th February 2011. Highest position was No. 2.

Travelling
Entered the charts at No. 8 on 30th March 2012. Highest position was No. 7.

 

Now Good Karma put Roxette back on track and who knows, maybe next week it’s at No. 1 not only on the vinyl, but on the album charts as well! Wishing as many top position weeks as possible!

Get the album at a record shop near you or at the following places: Bengans, Ginza, CDON, Amazon,  iTunes, Spotify, Deezer.

 

Update on 17th June 2016: 2nd week on the Swedish album charts: #12; vinyl charts: #5.

New exclusive photo book – RoXXXette On The Road

Roxette’s tour photo book we’ve been looking very much forward to is now already listed at Bokus and Adlibris. It will surely be available at other distributors as well, hopefully worldwide. So eXXXciting! Release date is 16th June.

RoXXXette On The RoadThe title is RoXXXette On The Road. According to Bokus and Adlibris, the book consists of 320 pages and it’s in English. It’s full of wonderful pics taken by master photographer Anders Roos on Roxette’s XXX tour and it also includes 41 reflections by our very own Per Gessle. The cover shows a photo of Marie and Per performing in front of a beautiful crowd on the steps at the Sydney Opera House in February 2015.

This is what Per said about the tour book project back then:

XXX ROXETTE WORLD TOUR BOOK info:

Yep, the plan is to have Anders Roos onboard in the studio, in green rooms, backstage, on stage, on trains, planes and in fast lanes just to document the real vibe around the Dynamic Duo and our fab entourage. Which we consider you to be part of!!!

Anders, as you might know, took the pix in the Gyllene Tider-book 2013. He’s a very nice guy, don’t be shy if you’ll spot him with his camera in the alleyways next to your seat! He might take your picture!

This is what the description of the book says, found on Bokus and Adlibris [translated from Swedish by PP]:

New exclusive photo book

”RoXXXette On The Road”

In the spring of 1986 a small hobby band was formed by two friends who had talked long enough about doing something together alongside their ordinary careers in Sweden.

30 years later, we follow the same band’s anniversary tour in the book “RoXXXette On The Road”, where Roxette’s songwriter engine Per Gessle adds his own reflections, flashbacks and anecdotes while photographer Anders Roos’s snapshots capture a global and apparently indestructible Swedish music phenomenon on tour.

The result is a unique opportunity to follow the group in the front row during their 30th anniversary celebration along with tens of thousands of fans night after night, both in Europe and on the other side of the globe.

The contrast to how it once started could hardly be greater. When Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle recorded their debut single “Neverending Love” under the name Roxette, they had certainly set their sights on trying to reach out internationally, but in practice, they knew that the chances were slim.

Roxette started at a time when Swedish pop music rarely managed to get outside Scandinavia, with Abba as the biggest exception to the rule. At best, they might reach out to the Scandinavian countries and Germany, but hardly to trendsetting pop countries as England and the United States.

Music without borders

But Roxette became at least as big exception to the rule. With their global breakthrough in 1989, with their unprecedented success, the group registered themselves both in Swedish and international music history, while also paving the way for what in the ‘90s was called “the Swedish music miracle”.

But despite all the talented artists and songwriters who have come from Sweden since then, no one has managed to repeat Roxette’s success, especially considering that the band both on stage and records have managed to touch several generations all over the world with their music. It is simply because Roxette’s greatest songs – and here we are talking about more than 30 hits – know no borders.

Or as Per Gessle writes in the book:

“Roxette has always been a live band. I feel quite safe and psyched in the studio, but Marie is definitely born to be on stage. During our first recordings, I was always surprised when she agreed to do a second or third recording of the song. She preferred to put in all at once, as if she was on stage. Her vocals to “Dressed For Success” were basically recorded directly during one utterly brilliant recording. Like “Soul Deep”. And “Cry.” The list goes on and on.”

Join the trip

With nearly 300 images on as many pages “RoXXXette on the road” takes the reader on a tour to Australia, where Roxette among other places performed with the mighty Sydney Opera House as their background.

We get backstage passes that take us all the way from inside the airplane, into the dressing rooms during the preparations before the concerts and to the very front of the edge of the stage where the musicians are pumping out songs like “The Look”, “Listen To Your Heart”, “It Must Have Been Love” and “Joyride” in front of an ecstatic crowd.

Good Karma

Furthermore, we get unique insights from the recordings of Roxette’s tenth studio album, “Good Karma” in the isolated studio, “Aerosol Grey Machine” in Österlen, Skåne.

In short, “RoXXXette on the road” is the backstage pass you always wanted to have, either you belong to the global gang of dedicated “roxers” who follow the group around the world or just curious about how daily life might look for a band that 30 years ago decided to see how far they could get. Part of the answer is here.

 

Marie’s biography to be released in German

41vXDGg27yL._SY400_You may remember the poll that we set up earlier this year to ask you to which languages Marie’s biography should be translated into.

Great news! Now we found out that the biography will be released in German on November 14th, 2016 by Edel Germany with the title ‘Listen to my heart.: Meine Liebe zum Leben’ (My love for life).

The book can already be pre-ordered on Amazon and any other German online book store. 

Let’s hope it will be available in other languages soon!

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”.

Shot_2

 

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

Shot_1

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?