ROXETTE HAS THE LOOK
When Sweden's Roxette rocketed to the top of the U.S. pop charts with "The Look," the debut single from their latest album, Look Sharp!, they had already achieved mega-stardom in Sweden. Roxette is Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson, both of whom had successful careers individually in Sweden before forming Roxette in 1986.
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ROXETTE HAS THE LOOK
Karen Levitt
When Sweden's Roxette rocketed to the top of the U.S. pop charts with "The Look," the debut single from their latest album, Look Sharp!, they had already achieved mega-stardom in Sweden.
Roxette is Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson, both of whom had successful careers individually in Sweden before forming Roxette in 1986. Per was the lead singer and songwriter of a Swedish band called Gyllene Tider, while Marie had a solo career and had become one of Sweden's most popular singers. Both sang in Swedish, but they knew that they would have to sing in English to gain popularity abroad. Per and Marie had been good friends for many years and had always wanted to work together, and when the right circumstances finally arose they found they were even more successful as a pair than either one had been alone! "We were lucky," says Marie. "It was perfect timing."
Roxette's first album, Pearls of Passion, was released in Sweden, and eventually went platinum, with two singles certified gold. But it was their second album, Look Sharp!, that launched their success in the United States.
The story behind America's introduction to Roxette is "really a fairytale," Marie explains. An American student studying in Sweden heard the duo and thought they were great. He took their album home to Minneapolis and brought "The Look" to the attention of a Minneapolis radio station. After playing the song, the radio station received many phone calls from people wanting to hear more of Roxette. "It was like a snowball," Marie says. "It exploded all over America and entered the Billboard chart at number 50."
Marie does about 80 percent of the singing for Roxette, while Per does most of the songwriting. Some of Per's songs are directed towards Marie, but not in a romantic sense. "He's like a brother to me," Marie explains, "and I'm like a sister to him."
Inspired by '60s music, Per is fond of the Beatles and the Kinks as well as Tom Petty and John Cougar. Marie, on the other hand, prefers Prince, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, and Joni Mitchell. Though their tastes are so different, Marie and Per try to combine their interests in their music.
They both agree that performing for a live audience is preferable to recording in the studio. "They are two different feelings," Marie explains. "I love to be on stage—it's the best part of being an artist. The most important thing is to communicate with an audience. You can see people's faces."
Roxette has a fan club based in Sweden, which they have to expand since their popularity now stretches across 19 countries. They like to talk to their fans as much as possible, and Marie says she loves to autograph her albums because "you can really come close to the fans in record stores."
If all continues to go well in the United States, Roxette will go on tour here to promote Look Sharp!"I really want to tour here because you come close to the audience. Everyone is so nice," Marie says. Future plans include recording another album, but not until next year. "We have to write the music first, and that takes time," Marie says. Right now Per and Marie are just concentrating on their current album, and a fast-paced schedule that takes them to as many as three major cities in a day. Marie says that it is tiring, but "it's a nice problem. When you have all of this success, it feels great."
