When Marie Fredriksson, the frontwoman of Roxette, died of cancer in 2019, aged 61, her bandmate and best friend Per Gessle couldn’t contemplate continuing without her. It didn’t matter that the singer — who had survived a brain tumour in 2002, but never fully recovered — had given the guitarist her blessing to keep Roxette going.
“Marie officially quit Roxette in 2016 because of her health, so we had a lot of time to talk about how I should proceed,” says Gessle, 66, who wrote the Swedish band’s songs, including 19 UK Top 40 hits and four US No 1s. “She was very open to me continuing, which obviously meant finding someone to replace her. I didn’t mention any particular singer, of course. I just wanted to wait and see what happened.”
Initially Gessle busied himself with other projects, including digging into the Roxette vaults for a 2020 compilation, Bag of Trix, and his solo career. In 2021 an invitation to record a cover for a Metallica tribute album led him to form PG Roxette, a new band with vocals provided by two former Roxette backing singers.
“I’m not a Metallica fan,” he admits. “I only know two songs — Enter Sandman and Nothing Else Matters, which is the one we covered. But I like [Metallica’s drummer] Lars Ulrich, so I said yes and that set off a chain of events which I wasn’t expecting.”
First came a PG Roxette studio album, Pop-Up Dynamo!, with some of Roxette’s key musicians on board, in 2022. At the time Gessle insisted his intention was not to try to replace Fredriksson. This year Roxette reformed with a new frontwoman, Lena Philipsson, 59, a Swedish star in her own right, who represented her country at the Eurovision in 2004, when she caused uproar with her skimpy outfit.
Since February the band has been on a world tour, selling out arenas playing only old songs, among them megahits The Look, Listen to Your Heart, Dressed for Success and It Must Have Been Love, the power ballad from the film Pretty Woman, which has been a radio staple and karaoke classic for 35 years.
• The 30 best movie soundtracks of all time — chosen by the critics
“I realise it has been confusing for fans and the reason is that I honestly couldn’t decide what to do with Roxette,” Gessle says. “As time went on I felt so sad about not being able to play our amazing Roxette songs. I wrote those songs, they are a huge part of my life. I missed them so much I changed my mind.”
Gessle didn’t purposely search for a new Fredriksson, whose power and range were Roxette’s calling card, but while recording an album of duets in Swedish last year, fate intervened. “Lena was one of my duet partners and in the studio I realised she has the capacity to sing Roxette songs,” he says. “I asked for a meeting and told her my idea. She was surprised.”
Lena Philipsson and Per Gassle of the reformed Roxette
RUNE HELLESTAD/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
Fredriksson and Gessle performing in 1990
PHIL DENT/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
Philipsson, who is sitting beside Gessle, nods in agreement. “I had to take a few days to think about it,” she says. “Then we had acoustic rehearsals to see if it would work. I’m not trying to imitate Marie. I have my own way of singing, although I am close to the originals.”
“It’s a fine line,” Gessle adds. “Not to copy, but to pay homage. Of course, I worried what people would to say, what critics would write. Roxette’s legacy is important. But we have a great catalogue, a fantastic band and lots of experience between us.
• The 25 best albums of the 21st century (so far) — ranked
“Lena can handle 100,000 people easily. A few fans on social media say it’s not the same without Marie, but I haven’t heard one person who has come to our concerts complain.”
In fact, the reviews — from fans and critics — have been ecstatic. For Philipsson the biggest challenge has been not colliding with Gessle on stage, rather than hitting her notes or remembering the lyrics.
“Our first ever gig in South Africa was a little nerve-racking,” she says. “Everyone had their phones up and I probably did forget a few words, though the crowd was singing so loudly it didn’t matter.
“It is intimidating to step into Marie’s shoes, but I’ve no nerves now. The second I said yes to this project I knew what I was facing. Had I not been up to the job I would have turned it down. It’s Per who needs help remembering the lyrics, not me.”
Philipsson and Gassle on stage in Sweden earlier this year
ANNE-MARIE FORKER/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
“It’s true,” Gessle says. “I have them on a monitor by my feet. I wrote the songs but I’m always forgetting the words. I don’t know how Lena does it. Or how we have so far avoided crashing into each other. In the Eighties, on my first tour with Marie, we bumped into each other on stage several times. Once she crushed my front tooth with her elbow. When you are an energetic band it takes time to learn to share a stage.”
Roxette was formed in 1986 at the suggestion of Fredriksson and Gessle’s shared record label, EMI. Both had enjoyed significant chart success at home (she as a solo folk singer, he as a band frontman) and wanted to have hits overseas. “Roxette was created to be international,” Gessle says. “We expected that to be in Germany, Holland and Belgium. At a push, Norway. Never did we foresee what would happen.”
• The best new songs of 2025 to listen to this week
Their debut album, Pearls of Passion, was a hit at home but bombed elsewhere. Its follow-up, 1988’s Look Sharp!, was destined for the same fate until an American exchange student heard it and took an album home to Minneapolis where he famously persuaded his local radio station to play the single The Look. The song spread like wildfire and within weeks The Look was No 1 in the US and Roxette were en route to becoming Sweden’s second-biggest pop export of all time.
Look Sharp! went platinum around the world. In 1990, asked to contribute to the Pretty Woman soundtrack, Gessle repurposed a Christmas song that Roxette had released three years earlier. It Must Have Been Love was shorn of its subtitle Christmas for the Broken Hearted and had its festive references removed. A third album, Joyride, sold 11 million copies, but still Roxette didn’t feel like rock stars.
“We’re Swedish, from the countryside,” Gessle says. “All through our career we were underdogs, not part of any scene. We were having these huge hits, but still no one knew where to place us. Even our record company didn’t understand us. In America they sent us on a lip-sync promotion tour, which Marie hated. She could sing the ass off anyone. It was crazy to tell Marie not to sing, but we didn’t complain. We were just grateful for the success.
“I remember our first South American tour in 1992. The economy was awful at the time and we were warned we wouldn’t make any money. Madonna, Guns N’ Roses and Michael Jackson had all cancelled. We said, ‘Let’s go!’ Playing stadiums there was the best three weeks of our lives.”
Fredriksson and Gessle playing at Wembley Arena in 1991
PETE STILL/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
Off stage Fredriksson was notoriously private — to the extent that she didn’t invite Gessle to her wedding in 1994 at the height of Roxette’s fame. In her 2015 memoir, Listen to My Heart — written when her cancer meant that she struggled to read and write, but she was still performing — she appeared to regret the decision. “Some of our friends felt excluded and disappointed,” she admitted. “Today, I understand that. But then I didn’t see it that way. My only concern was that I wanted the wedding to be private. It was what felt important then.”
• Read more music reviews, interviews and guides on what to listen to next
The press sensed a feud. In truth even the pair’s families were friends. Much of Have a Nice Day, the 1999 album that signalled the start of Roxette’s declining commercial success, was recorded at a residential studio in Spain with their young children, whom they later took on tour.
“I haven’t seen Marie’s kids in a couple of years, but her son is a musician and plays guitar,” Gessle says. “When they were young we took them on tour with a teacher. And a hotel in New York had their toys that they’d keep and bring out when we stayed there.”
For now, there will be no new Roxette music. In the future? Gessle won’t commit. “We are focused on the legacy of Roxette,” he says. “And we are getting an old-school Roxette reaction. Fans are going crazy for the songs they grew up with and I am reminded every night of the power of music. It feels like 1992 again, nuts!
“When the crowds are loud, I think of Marie and everything we achieved together. No one is going to forget her.”
Roxette play Wembley Arena, London, on Dec 1, ovoarena.co.uk