NEW YORK - "Always the Last to Know," "Being With You," "Only When I Dream," and "Ghost in the House" are some of the songs that have been written by Per Gessle, apparently for the forthcoming album ("FA"). They are listed on BMI's website.

  BMI, based here in the Big Apple, is the American performing rights organization which represents more than 250,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers - including Per and Marie - has a feature on their website called "HyperRepertoire" that gives access to the song title registration information contained in the BMI repertoire, including foreign works registered with BMI for performance in the United States.

  A search for songs by Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson turns up a number of songs that have only recently been registered. A call to BMI today confirmed that most of these "new" songs were registered in November. They are, apparently, contenders for the 14 or so tracks that will appear on "FA". Other new Gessle songs include "Holiday," "Little Miss Sorrow," "Loud Clothes," "Makin' Love to You," "Run to Me," "Turn of the Tide," and "The Center of the Heart (is a suburb to the brain)."

  Marie's possible contributions include "All I Ever Wanted," "Bad Moon," "Do You Wanna Go With Me?," "New World," and "Remember."

  BMI collects license fees (from radio stations, for example), and then distributes royalties to the writers and copyright holders it represents.

  Per told The Daily Roxette, during an interview in Boston just after MixFest, that between Marie and himself, they had come up with more than enough songs for FA. "From these, we'll select the songs that fit together best," he said. "The guitars will be back," he continued, "and we think all the fans will be pleased." He indicated that if a song didn't make it onto the album, that that didn't mean it wasn't a "good song," but often meant only that they didn't think it worked that well with the other songs. In fact, he said, they have the idea to release some sort of cross between "Tourism" and "Rarities" that would include many of the songs that didn't make it onto "HAND" - or wouldn't make it onto "FA".

  We asked Per if there will be a song on "FA" that has a good chance of becoming a #1 song on the Billboard chart here in the States. "Absolutely," he replied quickly, "there's several of them actually."

EDITOR'S NOTE: A tip of the hat to Károly Bérci and Chris Oriet for their help in developing this article. The photo is of Per onstage during MixFest in Boston. - LEO

• BMI