Roxette Biography

Roxette has always enclosed members Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle. They both had solo careers in the musical industry before and collaborated a few times before starting a band together.

The Big Bang

Driven by the success of their first single together under the name Roxette, Gessle and Fredriksson started working on their debut album. Pearls of Passion saw the light of day in 1986. Their second album Look Sharp! consolidated their success in Sweden and also shone some light on them in the US.

Touchstone Pictures wanted Roxette to contribute with a song to the movie Pretty Woman. They didn’t have time to come up with a new one so after some ups and downs, they provided a different version of “It Must Have Been Love”, one of their previous singles. After the film’s release, this single brought them international acclaim.

Further Career

Starting the 90’s with Joyride (1991) and ending them with Have a Nice Day (1999), Roxette entered the new millennium still struggling to keep up with the world’s expectations. Though still being loved in Sweden, their popularity in America went down.

Fredriksson suffered from a brain tumour and received surgery (2003). In the time she took for recovery, the two members took a break from Roxette and released solo material. They started performing again only in 2009. In a short span of years, they came up with two albums, Charm School (2011) and Travelling (2012) that met with modest success. After Fredriksson had health problems again, she declared she would stop touring, as the doctors recommended this to her. Roxette released their album Good Karma in 2016 that contained singles like “It Just Happens” and “Some Other Summer”.

Photo Source: Discogs