Per Gessle – 80’s DJ of the day on Mix Megapol

Per Gessle was the DJ on Mix Megapol between 10.00 and 12.00 CET on Sunday, 15th November. He played his own 80’s music from Roxette and Gyllene Tider, as well as songs from his favourite artists of the decade.

Songs played on the program (PG talked about the ones in bold):

  1. Bruce Springsteen – The River
  2. Pet Shop Boys – Always On My Mind
  3. Roxette – The Look
  4. Neneh Cherry – Buffalo Stance
  5. The Police – Every Breath You Take
  6. Divinyls – Pleasure And Pain
  7. The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be
  8. Steve Miller Band – Abracadabra
  9. Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes – (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life
  10. Irene Cara – Flashdance… What A Feeling
  11. Roxette – Sleeping Single
  12. Stevie Wonder – I Just Called To Say I Love You
  13. The Go-Go’s – Vacation
  14. Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams
  15. Madonna – Into The Groove
  16. Mauro Scocco – Sarah
  17. Chicago – You’re The Inspiration
  18. Gyllene Tider – Flickorna på TV2
  19. Pointer Sisters – I’m So Excited
  20. Midnight Oil – Beds Are Burning
  21. David Bowie – Time Will Crawl
  22. Lionel Richie – Say You, Say Me
  23. Tina Tuner – We Don’t Need Another Hero
  24. Queen – I Want To Break Free
  25. Roxette – Paint
  26. Orup – Då står pojkarna på rad
  27. Limahl – Neverending Story
  28. Roxette – Listen To Your Heart
  29. Harold Faltermeyer – Axel F
  30. Belinda Carlisle – Circle In The Sand

Roxette – The Look

Per says it has a fantastic title. He wrote it in 1988 for Roxette’s Look Sharp! album. He had just bought a new synthesizer, an Ensoniq ESQ-1 and he wanted to learn the programming properly. He had the melody, but didn’t have an idea for the text, so he just wrote down what came to his mind first. It has a psychedelic logic and it became their first No. 1 in the US.

Divinyls – Pleasure And Pain

According to Per, one of Australia’s absolute best bands is the Divinyls. Chrissy Amphlett was one of the best singers. He thinks Pleasure And Pain was their first single hit. It was written by Mike Chapman and Holly Knight. Mike Chapman is known to many as the producer of e.g. My Sharona by The Knack and that he wrote a lot of hit songs in the glam rock era, e.g. The Ballroom Blitz by Sweet. Per thinks Chrissy’s singing is terribly good on this one. So just leave everything you are doing and listen to it.

Roxette – Sleeping Single

It was written in 1988 based on the title. He thought it was an awesome title. Ambiguous in many ways. In the studio it became a key song for them. The sound was based on the technology at the time, synths, drum machines and programming mixed with Jonas Isacsson’s funky guitar. His playing is divine on this one. And don’t forget about Marie Fredriksson’s fantastic singing. A match made in heaven. It had never become a single, but it’s a tough song, it’s damn cool to play it live and is very popular among the fans.

The Go-Go’s – Vacation

The 80’s wouldn’t have been the same without The Go-Go’s. Per says he had the pleasure to work together with Belinda Carlisle, who sang in the band. He wrote 2 songs for her solo album. But already before that he was a fan of this song, Vacation from 1982. It’s incomparably good. There were 2 tough girl bands during that period, The Bangles and The Go-Go’s. He always was into The Go-Go’s. They still sound good today.

Gyllene Tider – Flickorna på TV2

It was first released as the backside of Himmel No. 7, but fate wanted something else with it. A certain disco in Stockholm started playing Flickorna på TV2 out of the blue, because it’s a quite slow song, not a dance song. There was something suggestive in it, so the hip discos started playing it and slowly but surely, in an organic way it became a hit all around Sweden. It’s probably owing to the combination of the title, the lyrics and the special sound of it. Per says it’s hard to explain it now what it meant when there were speakers between 2 programs on TV. It’s a bygone era, he was a teenager when he wrote it, but he remembers he had the text idea from Hasse och Tage [Swedish comedy duo. /PP]. He has a sketch of it, he can’t remember exactly, but he was inspired by them for this „sätta på” thing.

David Bowie – Time Will Crawl

David Bowie is one of Per’s greatest heroes. He wrote his project report [Swedish special work written during the secondary school’s final project work. /PP] about David Bowie. His career between 1969 and 1983 is magnificent, there is no weak record of his during that period. Later his music became less attractive to Per, but in 1987 he released Time Will Crawl which Per thinks is awesome. Bowie was an enormously talented singer and it’s special to play him on Mix Megapol. David Bowie in top shape.

Roxette – Paint

It’s on Look Sharp! and it was a particularly important song for Roxette when they recorded this album. It sounded totally awesome. They left their organic band and started woking with machines, sequencers and synths to sound modern at the time. Paint became a hybrid of hi tech stuff mixed with Jonas Isacsson’s fantastic guitar playing and Marie Fredriksson’s wonderful singing. Per is super proud of this song and thinks it’s one of their best.

[Unfortunately, Mix Megapol didn’t play the album version, but the T&A demo from TPGA… /PP]

Roxette – Listen To Your Heart

It’s a hit song that survived all these years. Per wrote it together with Mats MP Persson. He wrote the lyrics after a whole night’s conversation with a good friend who would divorce. The outcome of the conversation was that you should listen to your heart and do what feels right. It’s tough, but it became a really good title and also a very good song, thinks Per. When they recorded Look Sharp!, it was recorded for the Swedish market, even if they were dreaming about breaking through abroad. They talked about trying to make a song that sounds American and they wouldn’t use the synths and machines on that. This one was played in by a real band and they put it on the album as the last song on the tracklist, so that it’s not in the way of their new, hip sound on the other tracks. It became a super hit and their second US No. 1. It’s very popular all around the world.

DJ version of the new Roxette song is out in September

As Per confirmed it a couple of weeks ago, one of the new songs off the upcoming Roxette album will be out in a French DJ’s interpretation before we have the chance to hear the original version. Sebastien Drums, who says it’s ”a pleasure to work with legends”, posted a pic on Instagram at the end of July showing his monitor how he was finishing Some Other Summer.

One month later he also posted about shooting a video for this new track where he used the original Roxette vocals, but remixed the song itself.

Post #1:

IBIZAAAAAAA lets go !! Ready to shoot the video clip for my upcoming track “some other summer” featuring the legendary Roxette !

Post #2:

The video clip of my new track featuring Roxette is done. Such a good experience! Big thanks to the entire team ( director, drone operator, actors, etc ). Bye bye IBIZA !! Cant wait to see the final result

Hopefully, the video will be checked by Roxette before it’s out and there won’t be any similar issues to the ones with the Heikki L video. Well, at least Per shared SD’s post about the shooting with this text:

YEP, Good luck with the video, Seb!!

For all you curious ones… SD has made his own interpretation of one of the new Rox songs (you’ll find the “original” version on the new Rox album early next year) and we think it sounds really cool. Badabam, P.

So sadly, we can listen to the original version only early next year.

We’ve been expecting a Sebastien Drums single to be released and it’s surely still a plan, we just don’t know any exact date for the single and the video releases. Now it turned out the track will also be included in a big DJ project. According to Warner, a double CD with the title DJs – Die neuen Superstars will be released on 25th September. Some Other Summer is on CD1 as Track 18 – Sebastien Drums feat. Roxette and it will be 3:13 long. Here you can see the front and back covers of the CD.

It seems to be an even bigger project, since there will also be a long documentary under the same title as the CD on German VOX TV on 3rd October. Besides many other DJs (e.g. David Guetta, Avicii), Sebastien had also been interviewed for the docu, but probably, he talks only about his own DJ stuff there.

The double CD with the DJ version of Some Other Summer on it you can buy on Amazon.de and the track can be bought in mp3 as well. Available from 25th September. German iTunes has listed it, too and there you can listen to a 1.5-minute-long snippet, so you can judge yourself how it sounds. An Ibiza video will absolutely fit it.

Looking forward to hearing the original version with hopefully more Roxette-ish sound!

PG_MF
Stills are from the “Making of the Look – Roxette The Look [2015 REMAKE]” video

Don’t Go Dark is out in its complete length

© Per Gessle
© Per Gessle

As we informed you 2 weeks ago, there is another house music project of Per Gessle. Per cooperated with Kill FM and wrote the lyrics and the melody to their new track, Don’t Go Dark. As Mr. G informs, it’s called topline songwriting in the Crazy World of Dance, which charmed not only him, but also Helena Josefsson who provides the lovely vocals for this song.

Kill FM’s Don’t Go Dark EP is now out on iTunes and on WiMP, but it’s only a Scandinavian release so far. You’ll find 3 versions of the song. The original version and the instrumental mix are 4:08, while the radio edit is 3:05 long.

The song already got great support from several DJ’s, also from David Guetta among them. You can read a whole list of supporters under the video on YouTube in the description part.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1aftjd85fI

 

The lyrics don’t seem to be too complicated, but I’m still not sure if I understood the lines correctly. Here is what I can hear (feel free to correct it):

 

Don’t Go Dark
(Words & melody: Per Gessle; mix: Kill FM)

I couldn’t believe my eyes
I couldn’t believe my eyes
I gave my heart to a simple cause

I couldn’t believe my ears
I heard you were in tears
You gave your heart to a simple cause

Don’t go dark on me

I couldn’t believe my ears
I heard you were in tears
You gave your heart to a simple cause

You have a great face made to smile
You have the power to walk a mile
You got everything you need

Don’t go dark on me

 

Thanx for the cooperation in understanding the lyrics, Mandy Sedgwick and Celestte Williams.

Yet another Per Gessle related house music project

© Per Gessle
© Per Gessle

It’s still not the David Guetta cooperation, but after Heikki L’s ”You Don’t Want Love”, another house music related project of Per is out soon. Kill FM, a Swedish house duo (Kim Lindén and Jimmy Andersson) release their ”Don’t Go Dark” EP on 23rd June. This time it’s not Per who is singing, but Helena Josefsson. If you are following Helena on her social media sites, you know that she is now working as an optometrist besides taking part in several music projects and preparing her first jazz album. Some days ago she talked about the cooperation with Kill FM in an interview, but then it wasn’t known that the lyrics of ”Don’t Go Dark” are written by Per Gessle. Now the song had its premiere on Swedish Radio P3 and there they mentioned that the words are by Per.

The official preview of the song you can find on YouTube and on SoundCloud. Even David Guetta seems to like the track since he already used it in his latest DJ Mix 206 2014-06-08 (check it from 8:48). So step by step we are getting closer to that Guetta project it seems.

Update by Per:

YES, IT’S TRUE UPDATE! New track by Kill FM featuring Helena Josefsson who is in top shape and singing so well. I wrote the lyrics + the melody. It’s called “top line” in the Crazy World of Dance! Enjoy. /P.

 

Heikki L feat. Per Gessle – You Don’t Want Love video is out

Update Judith – May 28th
Due to various comments and statements from Per and Per’s management we have decided to remove the embedded video for the song.

Management statement:

Per Gessle appears as a guest solist on DJ Heikki’s single “You Don’t Want Love”. Per added his touch to the song, laid his vocals in a studio in Sweden and that is the full extent on his involvement in this project. DJ Heikki is the artist, it’s his single and it’s him and his record label who are responsible in making the video. The finished video was presented to Per just the other day and he does not appreciate it at all. Therefore he has chosen not to post it on any of his Facebook- or Twitter pages.

Per’s comment on Facebook:

HEIKKI L VIDEO UPDATE: Very strange and silly video indeed. I think Sony Finland should do the right thing and
1. withdraw it
2. make a new better one that we all could be proud of! /P.

————

 

The official video for You Don’t Want Love is out. Unfortunately, there is no Per in it. The only Rox world related reference is a Roxette cassette put in the player at 3:02. From this photo it seems that the video was recorded in April.