The Daily Roxette

Friday at noon (CET) the new Travelling Electronic Press Kit (EPK) was released, containing new live, backstage, studio and interview footage, in 720 HD no less! Click here to view!

The old classic Roxette/Gyllene Tider spoof "Join the Flumeride" is coming back to haunt you on September 30. The Daily Roxette had a chat with Tobias Persson, the man behind most of the movie.

Tobias, it's been a few years now since you recorded this little movie, what are your memories from the recordings? I recall you got hundreds of extras volunteering for it.

"Only good memories. People to the left and to the right were so nice and donated their time and talent. Making the songs was especially fun, looking for typical Roxette sounds, rhymes, expressions. It brings out the child in you spoofing people, but it also takes a heart, that you love your 'victims', else you can go very wrong..."

Per is even in the movie, so that goes to show you that he likes it. What about Marie, there's a rumor saying she wasn't too fond of it?

"Per loves the movie, yes. Especially the music – which one understands. What Marie thinks, I don't know. The real Per is a colorful pop-boy singing about balloons on the moon and who wants to discuss songs by the Kinks. If you exaggerate that you only get someone even more happy-go-lucky, sunnier and without sorrow. In contrast to Per, Marie has always been more somber, reflective, adult and one who sings about faith and doubts. When you exaggerate that, she gets to be like in the movie... very thoughtful, 'deep,' almost pretentious. Maybe this can be viewed as mean by some. Sadly, parodies usually get very one-dimensional, but I hope she understands that we've been using very wide brushes when we painted this canvas."

How did you get MP on this train?

MP together with Bengt (Petersson) run Halmstad Records together and I guess they wanted to blow the dust off of our little flick before it was totally forgotten – a cultural act worth noting! I'm also proud we got MP as an extra in "Kaka på kaka." Jan-Owe Wikström (Hallandsposten) is also in it, almost invisible on the couch! An especially dear memory for me is when we played the final "Kaka på kaka" in studio T&A and MP laughed so hard - exactly where he was supposed to!"

MP is a good sport, no doubt. What do the other guys featured in the movie think?

"I know that Micke Syd, Göran (Fritzon) and MP like it. I've never met Anders (Herrlin), but I hope and believe that he would like it. After the world premiere Fritzon told me 'One of those trampolines would've been handy!' Wikström likes it too, he was a magnanimously good sport about himself."

Just a few moments ago, Roxette's video for their single "Speak To Me" has been released. So far, only fans in Germany, Austria and Switzerland can watch the clip legally if they follow this URL: http://www.myvideo.de/watch/8240973/Roxette_Speak_To_Me  (or http://www.myvideo.ch/watch/8240973).

The video can be described as a more artistic follow up to the preceding "Way Out" video, a mix of live footage, backstage scenes, recording studio sequences and ... cats. According to Per, the director was Mikael Sandberg.

And do we see a Big Black Cadillac there?

Update August 22, 2011: The video is available for everyone to watch on http://www.roxette.se/index.php?news_id=78 now.

WEERT, Netherlands – Roxette celebrated their 25th anniversary on Friday the 8th of July. One day later, just before the concert at the Bospop festival, Daily Roxette reporter Colin van der Bel sat down with Per to talk about Roxette's past and future. Lead guitarist Christoffer Lundquist provides some additional commentary.

As the German EMI office just announced, the video for the next single release "Way out" will be published this Thursday on the German video portal www.myvideo.de. The Daily Roxette will keep you informed on the exact URL as soon as it will be made public.

"Way Out" is going to be released in Germany on June 10. The B-side will be a live version of "Crash! Boom! Bang! / Anyone" recorded at Forest National, Brussels, October 22, 2001.

The video can be viewed, worldwide, via Aftonbladet here http://www.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/musikvideor/article13083901.ab

Video available in HD on myvideo now: http://www.myvideo.de/watch/8152983/Roxette_Way_Out

And the results are proving VERY popular already! Enjoy!

PARIS – A new website for the Young Masters Program on Sustainable Development (YMP) was launched yesterday at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and "Green," the opening track on Christoffer Lundquist's new album Through the Window, is being used as the soundtrack for a video on the site that outlines the project.  The song, with lyrics by Michael Saxell, is a "perfect fit" according to Torvald Jacobsson of YMP.

Developed at Lund University in Sweden, the program features a web-based, global classroom. It is free of charge and open to students 16-18 years old all over the world. So far, more than 20,000 students from over 110 countries have completed the curriculum.

Christoffer's album, by the way, has met with mostly favorable reviews and initial sales figures put it in the top 30 on Sweden's official album chart.

NEW YORK – Helena Josefsson, currently on tour with Roxette as the backup vocalist, is one of five women whose lives are examined in "I’m My Own Dolly Parton," a deeply personal full-length documentary directed by Jessica Nettelbladt that had it's U.S. premiere last night here in New York at the Tribeca Grand as part of the Nordic Music Documentary Festival.

The film, which premiered in Sweden on March 11, introduces us to music producer Gundrun Hauksdottir and – along with Helena – singers Nina Persson, Cecilia Nordlund, and Lotta Wenglén. As the description of the film states, "five colorful women ready to take on whatever challenges life throws at them, inspired by Dolly Parton’s strength to go her own way and defy the pressure to conform. The film takes us on a thought-provoking and inspirational journey about taking yourself seriously, listening to your heart and having the courage to make your dreams come true."

Nettelblat tells The Daily Roxette that spearheaded by Hauksdottir (who was perhaps the biggest Parton fan), the group had assembled to do a Dolly Parton tribute concert in 2005 and she had been asked to film it. When they did another such concert a year later, she decided that she "was so inspired by these five women or girls" that it would be interesting to do a documentary about their lives. Most of the filming was done during 2007-2009, and after that there was a lot of editing to do.

Persson, who is best known as having been the lead singer for the Cardigans, said that "actually a gradual friendship developed" amongst the group of five, and that the movie "happened very much alongside everything else. I knew she was filming, but we really didn't think much about it."

In a particularly funny scene, Helena and her husband Martin are at home and inhale helium out of balloon that was given to their baby, and then they sing to him in high-pitched voices.

Several scenes were shot at Christoffer Lundquist's Aerosal Grey Machine Studio as both Helena and Nordlund were recording solo albums there during the three-year period the movie was being shot.

The end of the documentary was met with sustained applause, and everyone we spoke with after the screening felt that it was an extremely entertaining and thought-provoking film. 

STOCKHOLM – Per was on Swedish TV's "Gomorron Sverige" program on Wednesday morning.

Even without being able to understand the Swedish being spoken, the two segments that are available for viewing on the stations website (View Segment 1 | View Segment 2 ) might prove interesting, if only to see the included clips from the tour in South America or historical clips from when Roxette first topped the Billboard list in the United States with "The Look."

Here though, (after the jump) is a rough transcript of the first part of Segment 2:

Amongst other trivia, Per reveals he "hasn't been to IKEA in many, many years" in this recent interview with Mart Normet of ERR-TV that includes snippets of Roxette music videos.  Per singles out "Queen of Rain" and "The Look" as two of his favorite Rox melodies.  He claims "the ABBA guys are much richer than me" and talks about his interest in art and Formula One.  There's actually quite a bit more, and makes for interesting viewing.