Their hair might not be as big anymore, but the hooks are still there. Swedish pop duo Roxette, which broke out as an international pop sensation in the late 1980s, has recently returned to touring and recording. The band performs at ATT Show Box in Taipei on March 10.
Formed by singer Marie Fredriksson and singer and guitarist Per Gessle, Roxette stormed the US pop charts in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a string of hits, such as Listen to Your Heart, It Must Have Been Love and Joyride.
These songs exemplify Roxette’s guitar-based pop-rock sound, which is full of catchy hooks and laced with synthesizer and drum machine riffs. The duo’s knack for writing power ballads and heart-on-sleeve lyrics about love and romance made them Sweden’s answer to blockbuster rock bands like Journey, REO Speedwagon and Heart.
Photo courtesy of Very Aspect
The photogenic pair was also well-suited for the golden age of MTV. In Roxette’s videos, Fredriksson, a svelte blonde woman with short spiky hair, had an earnest and sunny disposition. Gessle, who writes the band’s music, sported the poofy coiffure and pulled the rock star poses that were standard among 1980s hair bands. They came across as an uncomplicated, less mysterious version of another popular male-female pop duo of the 1980s, the Eurythmics.
The band fell out of favor as Nirvana and grunge rock entered the American pop music consciousness by the mid-1990s, but continued to record and perform until 2002, when Fredriksson battled a brain tumor. She stopped performing for a number of years while Gessle continued with a solo career. The pair reunited in 2009, and started touring internationally again last year with a new album, Charm School. Another new album, Traveling, is also in the works, and is scheduled for release later this month.
Roxette, who last appeared in Taipei in 1995, will be arriving fresh from a well-received Australian tour, where it played several sold-out arena shows in Sydney last week. Die-hard Aussie fans might envy their counterparts in Taipei: the duo and their band will be performing in a relatively more intimate venue — ATT Show Box holds 3,200 people. More than three-quarters of tickets have been sold as of press time, according to promoter Very Aspect Culture Group (有象文化).
Tickets are available through Rose Record outlets nationwide, which are listed in Chinese only at its Web site (www.g-music.iticket.com.tw). In Taipei, one central branch is the National Taiwan University store, located at 2-4F, 104, Xinsheng S Rd, Sec 3 (台北市新生南路三段104號2-4樓).
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