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MUSIC

Summer festival to host Roxette world premiere

A movie revealing the story of one of Sweden's most successful bands (no, not Abba) is to be shown to audiences for the first time next month, organizers behind a Gothenburg festival announced on Thursday.

Published: 23 July 2015 13:13 CEST
Summer festival to host Roxette world premiere
Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle of Swedish pop duo Roxette. Photo: Balazs Mohai/MTI/AP

Swedish pop duo Roxette has sold more than 75 million albums since it was formed by Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson back in 1986. The band's international breakthrough came in 1989 with the single 'The Look'.

Performing to a sold-out O2 arena in London just days ago, the band is still going strong ahead of the release of brand new documentary 'Roxette Diaries' at Gothenburg's Way Out West festival.

Produced by world-famous Swedish director Jonas Åkerlund, the documentary 'Roxette Diaries' will give audiences their first look at backstage material and home videos from the band's heyday.

“Everything (and more) happened to Roxette between 1986 and 1995. This was the era where a video camera wasn't something you saw every day. The technical quality you would get was so-so but today I'm really happy we covered hundreds of hours of film from these magic years,” Per Gessle told fan site the Roxette Blog earlier this year.

“The ambition was to shoot everything. Studio-sessions, backstage parties, rehearsals. My wife, Åsa, was the commander-in-chief when it came to capture promo and TV shows as well as the extensive touring all over the world,” he added.

The 1980s duo, who have gained a cult following all over the world, reunited in May 2010 following a long hiatus after Fredriksson was diagnosed with a brain tumour in September 2002.

They have produced hits such as 'Listen To Your Heart', 'Sleeping In My Car' and 'It Must Have Been Love' — the latter made famous in Hollywood blockbuster 'Pretty Woman' in 1990.

Åkerlund, who was also behind Madonna documentary 'I'm Going to Tell You a Secret', is known for his long list of music videos for some of the world's top stars, including U2, Lady Gaga and The Rolling Stones.

“[Roxette] are one of the biggest bands to come out of Sweden, and this film shows them in a new light. (…) Of course with Jonas Åkerlund directing, it has a real art feel to it. He's very brave with his material,” Svante Tidholm, Way Out West's Head of Film Programming told online entertainment news site Screen on Thursday.

Gothenburg's Way Out West, which is being held from August 13th to 15th, is one of the most popular music festivals in Sweden and attracts more than 20,000 visitors every year. The line-up this year also includes gigs by Florence & The Machine and Emmylou Harris.

For a sneak peek at the 'Roxette Diaries' trailer, click here.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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