This station streams a non-stop tribute to Roxette, running the Swedish duo's full discography from chart-topping ballads to deep album cuts, broadcast through the PCRADIO network out of Sweden. You can stream it live and free right now on Radio Shuffle, wherever you are in the world.
Two Halmstad Musicians Paired Up By a Record Executive
Roxette exists because an EMI Sweden executive named Rolf Nygren thought two of the label's already-successful solo artists should try writing together. Per Gessle, frontman of the hit Swedish band Gyllene Tider, and Marie Fredriksson, a solo artist who had sung backup for Gessle's band, formed Roxette in 1986 on that suggestion, according to Wikipedia's history of the band. Their debut single, "Neverending Love," sold more than 50,000 copies in Sweden alone, an immediate signal that the pairing worked.
A Global Breakthrough That Started With One American Exchange Student
Roxette's international explosion did not come from a label campaign. An American exchange student in Sweden brought their 1988 album Look Sharp! back home, and a Minneapolis radio station started playing "The Look" purely on its own momentum. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 8, 1989, and eventually topped charts in 25 countries, all traced back to one student's suitcase.
A Christmas Song That Became a Movie's Signature Ballad
Roxette's biggest hit almost didn't exist in the form anyone remembers. "It Must Have Been Love" started life as a Christmas song before being repurposed for the 1990 film Pretty Woman, after producers initially rejected it and only came back around once they had re-edited the movie. The song spent two weeks at number one in the US and topped charts in more than 20 countries, and by 2014 it had logged its five millionth radio play in the United States alone.
A Diagnosis That Redefined the Band
Roxette's momentum carried through the 1991 album Joyride, which sold 11 million copies worldwide and sent the duo on a tour that played to 1.5 million fans across 107 shows. Everything changed on September 11, 2002, when Fredriksson suffered a seizure and skull fracture that revealed a malignant brain tumor. Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation saved her life but left her permanently unable to read, with lasting vision and hearing loss, forcing the band into a long hiatus before a 2009 reunion and a 2011 to 2016 tour that reached 2.5 million people. Fredriksson retired from touring in April 2016 and died on December 9, 2019.
Tune In
Sweden's second-best-selling act after ABBA, with somewhere between 75 and 80 million records sold worldwide, Roxette's catalog gets a dedicated, round-the-clock home on this station. Stream it free on Radio Shuffle to hear it live.