The Daily Roxette

SYDNEY - More "promotion" continues with one of the largest radio stations in Sydney, MIX 106.5, the same network that sponsored Roxette's recent Australian tour, featuring the Travelling EPK on the front page of their site promoting the album. And Max TV are doing the same thing as in Germany the other week - you may pre-listen Travelling in its entirety. It only works with Internet Explorer though.

This is very big news for this country... although still no iTunes availability.

Brad contributed to this article.

Roxette's brand new album Travelling, released digitally yesterday, is already charting on the iTunes album charts:

Sweden #3
Finland #6
Germany #9

The Germany based video website Tape.tv offers the exclusive opportunity to pre-listen to the new Roxette album Travelling since yesterday. The stream only works in Germany and Austria though.

Travelling will be in the stores on Friday or Monday (in Europe), depending on the country. Of course, it can already be pre-ordered on iTunes.

The price is 105 SEK (11 €) in Sweden. The price includes an unnamed bonus track, but Per has since revealed that it's the T&A demo of "Lover Lover Lover." The vinyl album will contain two bonus tracks as well; the demos of "Me & You & Terry & Julie" and "Charm School."

Snippets available on Amazon UK.

LONDON - After being contacted by lots of fans based in the UK about the delayed release of the "It's Possible" single on the usual retail download sites, The Daily Roxette contacted EMI in the UK to see what the plan was for releasing the new material in the UK.  Today we heard from Head of Marketing, for both EMI UK and EMI Svenska:

There have been several factors contributing to the delay in the UK release of "It's Possible", one of them being some 'fine-tuning' to the music by Roxette.  EMI UK has also used a brand new release solution which unfortunately required more work than first thought.  However, EMI confirmed that the song has now been sent to the UK arms of iTunes, Amazon, Play etc and should be available for download in the next 2/3 days.  

The communication ended with EMI confirming their commitment to Roxette and the release of their forthcoming album Travelling. 

Roxette is back with a new album:  Travelling and a taster "It’s Possible"!

Three years after their 2009 comeback, Swedish pop phenomenon Roxette is hotter than they’ve been since their early '90s heydays.

Their World Tour is in full swing with almost a million concert tickets sold since the tour kicked off in the Tatneft Arena in Russian Kazan a year ago. On top of that, another million Roxette record sales have been added to the already dizzying 70 million that Roxette have sold over the years.

So far the band has played more than 85 shows in 30+ countries (and the trip continues—they don’t plan to rest until they’ve played 150 shows). But besides zigzagging between airports, arenas, hotels and meeting fans from all over the world, the band also has found time to record their new album Travelling. 

The idea has been to tap into all the positive energy that has boosted the band during this dazzling trip, and channel it to new Roxette music. In short, an album that is just like 1992’s Tourism captures the feeling of a band on a roll — constantly on the move, snatching inspiration as they go; recording in hotel rooms, studios, at soundchecks and in concert.

The result is a fascinating musical postcard with 15 superb songs, most of which are new, some that are revisited classics and the rest being pearls that for various reasons hasn’t seen the light of day before. A tight and inspired band has gathered around a batch of Gessle tunes, where the relentless hit-maker again and again proves that his sense of melody and ability to surprise is still top-notch.

”It’s Possible” is the first taster from Travelling - 2 minutes and 34 seconds of sunny pop music that shows one of Roxette’s many sides in 2012. 

"It's Possible" is released tomorrow to radios and as a digital release. The physical single is out March 16. Travelling is out March 26.

The good news keep rolling in! On Friday, March 2, Roxette's new single "It's Possible" (version one) will be released, both to radio and as a digital release. There will be a physical release March 16. The B-side is "It's Possible" T&A demo.

Enjoy the snippet!

The tracklist of Travelling has now been revealed in full. See below with comments from Per Gessle:

1. Me & You & Terry & Julie
   Terry & Julie are the two youngsters from the Kinks’ "Waterloo Sunset" but everyone knows that, right??? This is the craziest song we've recorded in ages - and maybe the best?
2. Lover Lover Lover
3. Turn of the Tide
   Totally new recording (in Sun City) of a song we never used for Have A Nice Day.
4. Touched by the Hand of God
   Used to be called "Charm School." This track is happier than happy!
5. Easy Way Out
   A country song.
6. It's Possible
   Rocking version á la "Radio," kicks ass!
7. Perfect Excuse
   From Party Crasher, this is a duet between Marie and Helena, I was busy checking things out. This version is not slower, but more acoustic.
8. Excuse Me, Sir, Do You Want Me to Check on Your Wife?
   "Excuse Me Sir" is one of those songs where we sound like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
9. Angel Passing
   A ballad.
10. Stars [live from Dubai soundcheck]
11. The Weight of the World
    New fabulous mix of the old track.
12. She's Got Nothing on (But the Radio) [live in Rio]
13. See Me
    Totally new recording except Marie's vox. It's amazing!!
14. It's Possible ­[version two]
    Summer version, in Gyllene Tider's "Hjärta utan hem" arrangement.
15. It Must Have Been Love [live in Rotterdam]
    It's the NOTP strings with new drums by Pelle and new vox by Marie, no guitars or anything... Also amazing!

"I must say it looks to me like a fine record," says Per to The Daily Roxette.

SYDNEY - The Australian success continues; Roxette's compilation album from 2006, Roxette Hits!, climbs to #17 on the Australian ARIA album charts this week! This is the first time Rox has been on the Australian top 20 since 1996 and that was with Don't Bore Us Get to the Chorus!, which peaked at #10.

On the iTunes pop album charts Hits! is at #5.

MELBOURNE - With just 90 minutes before showtime, I had the great honor of sitting down with Per Gessle back stage at Rod Laver Arena for Roxette's second Melbourne concert. We discussed all topics from Travelling to Charm School to the exciting soon-to-be-announced North American Tour and everything inbetween. Enough talk: enjoy this exclusive Daily Roxette interview.

TDR: OK, so first up, let's talk about Travelling. We've had Tourism 2, 2rism, T2 and now Travelling, how did you finally decide on a title?

PG: My idea was to call it Tourism 2, I thought it sort of made sense because the whole idea with the album was sort of the same (as Tourism) sort of a sequel, but it was actually our record company which didn't like the idea because they said people are gonna get confused and they'll mix it up with Tourism number one, personally, I didn't get that. So then we said, OK, how about T2? But then they said no because a title with a number wasn't good and I said how about the Adele's record 21... and they didn't answer that one (laughs). At the end of the day, Marie and I fooled around with different ideas and I came up with this Travelling thing because it's like, Roxette is travelling at the moment so we decided we liked it even more and chose that instead of having these quarrels all the time... But we kept the same subtitle “songs from studios, stages, hotel rooms and other strange places”. For some reason, some people find things complicated...

TDR: The concept reminded me of the KISS live album(s) Alive, they have Alive 2, Alive 3, Alive 4, sort of a continuing legacy...

PG: ...yeah and I think that's a cool thing. It's like Bat out of Hell...

TDR: ...same as Welcome 2 My Nightmare by Alice Cooper...

PG: ...yeah, for me, I always thought that was a smart commercial move... but obviously I was wrong (laughs) ...but like I said, instead of having a big fight about it, we just decided to use something else and yeah, I guess it was a little confusing for those reading on the websites etc.

TDR: OK, so I'm guessing you're not going to reveal too much about the new album, but what can you tell me and talk me through the structure, how many new songs and so on?

PG: There are quite a lot of new songs, more than we were supposed to have. We came up with certain ideas, I revealed a couple of titles the other day, but I can reveal some more, for instance there is a version of "Perfect Excuse" from Party Crasher sung by Marie, which is a very cool version and it's there because basically, I always wanted to hear Marie sing that song, 'cause it's a beautiful song. On my album it's me singing the verse and Helena is doing the chorus and this is just Marie and Helena singing it, it's very slow and very different to the original...

TDR: ...so you don't sing on that song now at all?