Per Gessle+Friends
perform songs from the
★ THE ROXETTE VAULT ★

No hits. No concert staples. Just the songs waiting to be heard.

‘The Look’ ★ ‘Joyride’ ★ ‘Listen To Your Heart’★ ‘It Must Have Been Love’ ★ ‘Dangerous’ ★ ‘Spending My Time’
‘How Do You Do!’ ★ ‘Sleeping In My Car’ ★ Church of your Heart’ ★ ‘Almost Unreal’ ★ ‘Crash! Boom! Bang!’ ★ etc!

Not tonight! Imagine Per announcing a completely different kind of Tour. Not another Roxette greatest hits show. Not even a conventional Roxette Tour. Instead:

‘PER GESSLE+FRIENDS perform songs from THE ROXETTE VAULT’

An entire evening built around the other Roxette songs.

The album tracks that never became singles. The B-sides. The outtakes. The unfinished recordings. The demos that never made it beyond Per’s studio. And, most importantly, songs that have never been performed live before.

After forty years of Roxette, there are hundreds of songs sitting behind the hits.

Perhaps it’s finally time to open The Roxette Vault for the live stage…

Now, before anyone starts hyperventilating at the thought of a Roxette concert without the hits, hear us out…

This wouldn’t be a replacement for a regular Roxette Tour. Quite the opposite. When thousands of people buy tickets to see Roxette, many of them are understandably there to hear the songs that brought them in through the door in the first place.

You can’t exactly welcome a casual audience, announce that ‘The Look‘ has been given the evening off and then launch enthusiastically into a demo recorded in Per’s kitchen in 1988. Well…actually, we’d quite enjoy that. But this would be something different.

A smaller, deliberately marketed Tour for those who already know where the rabbit holes in the Roxette catalogue lead.

No obligation to play the hits. No twelve-song block of concert staples that has to be accommodated before anything adventurous can happen. Instead, open The Roxette Vault.

Album tracks. B-sides. Outtakes. Lost songs. Demos. Songs that have sat on Roxette albums for years without ever getting anywhere near a stage. After forty glorious years, there’s an extraordinary amount of music…

Planting the seed…

During our #ROX40 Interview with Per earlier this year, we asked him about some of the Roxette songs he considers underrated.

His answer?

“A couple of songs that I really like myself that weren’t singles like ‘I’m Sorry’, ‘Lover Lover Lover’ and ‘Dream On’”
Per Gessle, The Daily Roxette ROX40 Interview, April 2026

Well Per, that’s three songs sorted already. And interestingly, none of them have been performed live before, so let’s start there…

‘I’m Sorry‘ is one of the forgotten beauties from ‘Crash! Boom! Bang!’. It has quietly passed 3 million streams on Spotify, despite never being a single and spending more than three decades living in the shadow of the album’s better-known songs. It’s melodic, unmistakably Roxette and, perhaps most importantly for this imaginary Tour, it would actually work live. Per already thinks it’s underrated. We agree. Onto the setlist it goes.

‘Lover Lover Lover‘ is another of Per’s choices, this time from ‘Travelling’. More than 3.2 million Spotify streams suggest quite a few other people haven’t forgotten it either. It’s also exactly the sort of song this Tour should be about. Not some completely impenetrable curiosity that seven people own on a Bulgarian promotional cassette, but a proper Roxette song with a genuine audience that simply never found its way onto the stage. Until now.

‘Dream On‘, was Per’s third choice. A ‘Charm School’ album track, and another song that’s never had its moment under the lights.

Three songs suggested by the songwriter himself. We’re taking that as permission.

What about the Streaming Numbers?

Streaming has changed the idea of what a “popular” song actually is. For decades, the Roxette hierarchy was fairly straightforward. Singles were pushed to radio, appeared on compilations and became the songs everybody knew. Album tracks stayed on the albums.

Spotify doesn’t really care about any of that. Today someone discovering Roxette can jump from ‘Listen To Your Heart‘ to something more obscure like ‘The Heart Shaped Sea‘ in seconds. Meaning that some of the supposedly obscure songs aren’t particularly obscure anymore…

Breathe has passed 3.2 million Spotify streams.

Turn of the Tide is approaching 3 million.

Come Back (Before You Leave) has passed 2.5 million.

I Remember You has more than 2.4 million.

Half A Woman, Half A Shadow has passed 2 million.

No One Makes It On Her Own sits above 1.7 million.

View From A Hill has more than 1.4 million.

Even The Voice, once tucked away on the other side of a single, has passed 1.2 million.

These aren’t ‘The Look‘ or ‘It Must Have Been Love‘ numbers, obviously. But that’s rather the point.

Nobody buying a ticket for ‘The Roxette Archives Tour‘ would be expecting ‘The Look‘.

They’d be buying one precisely because they might finally hear ‘The Voice‘.

We’ve already seen a glimpse into The Roxette Vault, and it worked…

The current Roxette Tour actually gave us a tiny glimpse of this idea.

When the Tour began in Cape Town in February 2025, ‘What’s She Like?’ suddenly appeared in the set.

A song from ‘Crash! Boom! Bang!’ that had spent more than thirty years without being performed by Roxette was finally played live. ‘Vulnerable’ also received its live debut. Nobody fled the building. The Roxette universe remained intact.

That’s what makes digging into the catalogue exciting. A song can sit untouched for decades and then, with a new arrangement and a live band behind it, suddenly become something completely different.

Imagine doing that for an entire evening!

Into The Roxette Vault we go…

Go right back to ‘Pearls Of Passion’ and there’s ‘Call Of The Wild’. It was already being suggested in the pages of TDR years ago as a forgotten song deserving a first live outing.

Then Look Sharp! gives us ‘Half A Woman, Half A Shadow’ and ‘View From A Hill’. From the same period, there’s ‘The Voice’, one of those b-sides that became almost mythical among fans long before streaming made everything permanently available.

Move into ‘Joyride’ and suddenly ‘I Remember You’ is staring at you alongside ‘Small Talk‘ and ‘Physical Fascination‘. Then there’s ‘Come Back (Before You Leave)’, another song that has quietly accumulated millions of streams despite never becoming part of the normal Roxette story.

‘Tourism’ also offers ‘The Heart Shaped Sea’, although this was performed at MTV Unplugged and during XXX.

‘Crash! Boom! Bang!’ gives us Per’s own pick, ‘I’m Sorry’, but what about ‘Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way?‘.

Then things become ridiculous….because ‘Have A Nice Day’ and ‘Room Service’ are crammed full of possibilities: ‘Beautiful Things’, ‘Cooper’, ‘Looking For Jane’, ‘Jefferson’, ‘Entering Your Heart’ and the glorious ‘My World, My Love, My Life’.

Songs that fans have lived with for decades, but which have never had a live identity.

What would ‘Beautiful Things’ sound like in 2027 with Clarence, Christoffer and the band pulling it apart and rebuilding it?

What happens if ‘Looking For Jane’ becomes louder, rougher and more guitar-driven?

What does ‘My World, My Love, My Life’ become with an audience singing the chorus back?

We genuinely don’t know. And that’s exactly why we’d want to hear them.

Then we get even more nerdier…

The Roxette Vault Tour shouldn’t stop at albums. This is where ‘The Per Gessle Archives‘ and ‘Bag Of Trix‘ completely changes the game.

Over the last few years, songs that once only existed as names on old lists, forgotten demos or recordings circulating among collectors have become legitimate parts of the officially released Roxette Catalogue.

So why couldn’t some of them become legitimate parts of a concert too?

‘One Is Such A Lonely Number’ has almost 900,000 Spotify streams in its demo form. ‘Seduce Me’ has passed 900,000. The demo of ‘Love Spins’ is approaching the same territory. ‘Don’t Believe In Accidents’ is heading towards 800,000.

These aren’t finished, polished Roxette master recordings in the traditional sense. Good. That’s where the fun begins.

Take one of them back into rehearsal. Finish it. Change it. Give it the arrangement it never received. Turn a years old demo into a brand new Roxette live song.

Imagine hearing Per introduce one with:

“This one was recorded as a demo in 1988. We’ve never played it before…”

So…what would a possible Setlist look like?

We tried. And yes, this got out of hand rather quickly…

June Afternoon
You Can’t Put Your Arms Around What’s Already Gone
Lover Lover Lover
I Remember You
Jefferson
Entering Your Heart
I’m Sorry
Come Back (Before You Leave)

Little Miss Sorrow (Acoustic)
Place Your Love (Acoustic)
Always Breaking My Heart (Acoustic)
Half A Woman, Half A Shadow (Acoustic)

Touched By The Hand of God
Looking For Jane
From A Distance
View From A Hill
Good Karma
My World, My Love, My Life

Small Talk
Yellow Bellied Alligator
Monster Hangover
Dream On
The Voice
Breathe

ENCORE

Do You Wanna Go The Whole Way?
One Wish
Let Your Heart Dance With Me
Beautiful Things

No ‘The Look‘. No ‘Joyride‘. No ‘Listen To Your Heart‘. Not even ‘It Must Have Been Love‘.

And strangely, looking at that setlist, we don’t think we’d miss them. Not for one night anyway.

No Hits Required!

There’s something else rather appealing about the idea. It would remove expectations.

On a normal Roxette Tour, every song competes for space with forty years of hits. Play something obscure and inevitably somebody asks why ‘Spending My Time‘ disappeared to make room for it.

On The Roxette Archives Tour, nobody gets to complain that ‘Dangerous‘ wasn’t played. That’s the deal. You knew what you were buying.

Forty years of songs. Ten studio albums, plus compilations containing new recordings, B-sides, bonus tracks, demos, alternate versions and the enormous Bag Of Trix archive.

There are enough songs for an entire Tour without touching the Greatest Hits cupboard once!

The Friends

Guests could change for each concert, opening up the possibility of varying the setlist across the Tour too.

Who would you like to see alongside Per and the Roxette band? We’d personally love to see Lena return, as well as Helena. Other guest vocalists would be interesting too.

One for the fans…

Would it fill stadiums? Unlikely. But it wouldn’t need to.

This feels like theatres. Smaller arenas. Multiple nights. Somewhere the songs can breathe a little and Per can actually talk about where they came from.

Maybe the set changes from night to night. Maybe there’s an acoustic section where one forgotten song appears for three concerts and disappears again. Maybe fans vote for an archive track before each show.

Maybe Per digs through those famous boxes of demos and finds something even we don’t know exists.

Now we’re getting dangerous. Not ‘Dangerous‘ though. That’s banned. For one Tour at least.

Forty years after Neverending Love started the Roxette story, we’ve celebrated the singles, the albums, the videos, the Tours and the enormous international hits.

Perhaps it’s time to celebrate everything that happened between them…

The songs that weren’t singles. The songs radio never played. The B-sides. The outtakes. The demos. The songs that somehow survived thirty or forty years without ever being performed in front of an audience.

Roxette: The Roxette Vault Tour.

Per? We’ve done the difficult bit. Now you just need to rehearse 20-30 completely unfamiliar songs.