new album

Roxers’ favourite Good Karma tracks

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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? 😉

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

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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!

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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.

Roxette – Good Karma

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Roxette released their long-awaited first single off the 10th studio album on 8th April. It Just Happens is one of the 11 songs on the album and as Per says, it’s one of his favourite tracks on Good Karma. It was written in May 2014 and it was one of the first songs they recorded for the album. They chose it as a first single, because it’s great to have a little bit of Marie, a little bit of Per, a little bit of you and a little bit of everyone in it. Marie and Per promotes their new single together in THIS video.

The album is out on 3rd June in 3 formats: digital, CD and LP. You can have a look at the items on Bengans, Ginza, CDON, Amazon, etc. and you can pre-order it on iTunes as well. Being a worldwide release, you will probably find at least the CD in a record shop / petrol station near you. A limited edition coloured vinyl popped up only at Bengans so far. We don’t know much about how many copies are planned to be released from it and if it has any other limited edition feature (e.g. a bonus track) besides being coloured. Well, Per mentioned some time ago that they had 20 songs for the album and recorded 14 properly. Now there are 11 tracks on the album, so what’s with those 3 other properly recorded songs? They might turn up as bonus tracks somewhere and we hope to hear the demos, too.

In a recent interview Per says good karma is a positive thing and sums up Roxette’s special history. They had all the success, then came all the disaster when Marie got ill in 2002, then they did their 2009 comeback against all odds. He states:

We want to make a positive statement with this album. There is a certain positiveness around the whole album.

The 10th album will be the shortest Roxette record with its 38 minutes, but each and every song has an exciting title and I think It Just Happens was a great teaser track for the whole thing. Marie says:

I look forward to the release of our album ”Good Karma” in June – for me it’s our best album ever!

 Good Karma tracklist (incl. length)

  1. Why Dontcha? 2:45
  2. It Just Happens 3:46
  3. Good Karma 3:19
  4. This One 3:11
  5. You Make It Sound So Simple 3:42
  6. From A Distance 3:30
  7. Some Other Summer 3:08
  8. Why Don’t You Bring Me Flowers? 3:32
  9. You Can’t Do This To Me Anymore 3:50
  10. 20 bpm 3:48
  11. April Clouds 3:29

Warner Music did a great job with the promotion of the single, now let’s hope they keep up the good thing and promote the album at least as enthusiastically. What else? Oh yes. Let’s hope the radios start playing It Just Happens worldwide at last.

It’s a torture to wait until 3rd June! Until then, some interviews will surely see the light of day, as Per posted about some phoners he did today. Looking very much forward to hear / read them all!

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Thanx for the back cover with corrected aspect ratio, Roxette Cafe!

 

Roxette – It Just Happens

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I think the first time we could hear about the song It Just Happens was when Marie’s biography was published. It turns out that the song was recorded in September 2014 at Marie’s studio, Vinden. There was Marie, Per, Clarence and Christoffer to record it. In the book you can read it’s a typical Roxette ballad, like It Must Have Been Love, Vulnerable or Spending My Time.

This is what Per said about the song in October 2015:

Yes, I can now confirm that this is true. One of the brand new songs is called IT JUST HAPPENS. And it’s big and bold and done with love. It’s ready for mix, mastering and eventual human digestion. Stay tuned, folks. /P.

Mr. G confirmed in an interview done by Swedish Radio that the single would be out in April and a video is in the making.

It Just HappensThen came 1st April and the cover of the single popped up. Ojojoj. Most of us thought it was an April fools day joke. I mean the layout of the cover. What the hell is that butterfly with sun-go-down wings and guitar ass doing on the cover? It looks like a cheap and weak Photoshop attempt. Then more and more links appeared to the single and that the release date is 8th April. Oh well… it’s not the first time we don’t like the cover of a Roxette album and seeing this, I’m afraid it’s not the last time either. More important is how the song sounds. You know me, I’m usually one with the most positive approach towards Roxette and their stuff, no matter what they do, but this cover put my expectations and excitement at a lower level. So I hoped for an awesome song at least, if the cover is not the funkiest anyway.

Why to wait until the official release date? These days, in the world of digital music consumption new stuff is released digitally first and maybe even sooner than the official date. It has just happened now. The song is already available on Deezer [The link didn’t work for a while, since Deezer was too early to make it public. /PP] and on Roxette’s Soundcloud page. Oh yeah. The cover of the single is really THAT one. Gosh… I try to get over it, I promise.

The song, I thought it would be more of a sung-by-Marie type of typical Roxette ballad, so the first surprise came when I heard Per start to sing.  To me it’s a little bit of Vulnerable, yes, but more Cooper! A Thing About You and Speak To Me also came to my mind while listening to it. It Must Have Been Love? No, the song is definitely not of that caliber, I would say. But I don’t mind. I find the song attractive and powerful, sounds like classical Roxette, but fresh! I love Marie’s high tones and how Marie’s and Per’s voices blend. By the way, is it me or Per really sounds a bit like David Bowie here? The song is on repeat since at least an hour, so counting with its 3:46 length, I listened to it at least 15 times already. And hey, I can already sing along by heart! OK. Me likes the song and I almost forgot about the cover. 😉 Hopefully, there will be a physical release as well.

 

It Just Happens

It’s a cabaret, taking over on a quiet lazy backseat day
And it’s so beautiful
Like the sunshine on your balcony
Just yesterday

Don’t underestimate
Your heart is never late
And love will always find a way

It just happens
You don’t know what’s going on
If it’s new or if it’s been there since long
If it’s right or wrong
You fall in love
You fall in love

You don’t have a say
Just let it slide and close your eyes and watch the passion play
Don’t underestimate
Your heart can never wait
And love will always find a way

You’ll fall in love
It just happens
You’ll fall in love
It just happens

Don’t underestimate
Your heart can never wait
Love will always find a way

It just happens and you don’t know what’s going on

©Per Gessle

 

IJH makes me curious about the rest of the songs on the upcoming album. Hearing how It Just Happens starts, it is for sure not the intro song. Will it be an uptempo hit then? Most probably. We have to wait until 3rd June to find out. That is the release date of the new album. Oh and don’t forget, a video is coming, too! Hopefully, without any butterflies.

 

Roxers’ favourite Roxette studio album covers

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Some days ago we asked you to list your Top3 favourite Roxette studio album covers. We got a lot of comments and after the collage had been shared both on Roxette’s official Facebook page and Instagram account, there were even more votes. It seemed to be obvious which covers would end up at the Top3 positions, but I was curious about the exact results. It’s of course not a representative sample, but who else could judge Roxette’s album covers better than Roxers?

After checking all the comments, I counted the votes / mentions and found out the Top2 were indeed quite obvious. Most people voted for Joyride and Look Sharp!. I would say the difference between the number of votes is so tiny, the 2 covers are equally strong. The third position is occupied by Crash! Boom! Bang!, but Tourism was very close to become the third as well. The difference is quite small here, too. The 5th best cover according to Roxers is that of Room Service.

The remaining 4 covers are well behind any of those in the Top5. No surprise poor Travelling (which was released 4 years ago today, by the way) is at the end of the list. I remember how excited we all were about the new album in 2011 and 2012 and when the cover was shared on Facebook, tons of us first thought it was a joke and that it couldn’t be the final design. Not that it wasn’t funny to see BoJo on the sleeve, but… ehm… Then we decided, OK if the content is awesome, we don’t really care about the cover. The songs turned out to be fab, so the sin made with the album cover was forgiven, so to say.

We like busy covers only if there is a real concept behind them (see Tourism) and we love professional, artistic photos of Marie and Per on the sleeve. We are not into weird Photoshop attempts (see Travelling) and busy covers with seemingly no concept behind them (see Charm School). Don’t get us wrong, we love seeing such non-pro pics, but it works much better on social media sites or in books than on album covers.

These days when music is consumed rather digitally, it might be even more important to have a great cover to catch the attention of those who still go and buy CDs at record shops. Come to think of it, even for digital use it is important to have a good-looking sleeve. At least I prefer seeing a clear, eye-catching cover pic on Spotify and similar sites when I listen to music either on computer or on my smartphone.

So anyone in charge of the upcoming album cover design, please make an attractive one! Now you can see which directions Roxers prefer. 😉

 

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