Facts: Marie Fredriksson
She was born in 1958, grew up in Östra Ljungby in Skåne and moved to Halmstad in her teens. Striked out as a solo artist with songs in Swedish. Her first hit was "Still smelling love" from the debut album "Hot Wind" which came in 1984.
In total, she released six solo albums. On the album "The change" which came in 2004 she sang in English. In 1986, she and Per Gessle formed the band Roxette. The debut "Pearls of passion" was released in 1986, but the breakthrough international came two years later with "Look sharp!" Two singles from the album, "The look" and "Listen to your heart", became listettes in the United States. The album "Joyride" from 1991 was also a great success and the single with the same title got to the American singles list first place.
Roxette has released nine albums. The latest, "Good karma", came in 2016.
Marie Fredriksson is dead
MUSIC Singer Marie Fredriksson has passed away. She turned 61 years old.
She broke through 1984 with the album "Hot Wind" and then became world famous as a singer in Roxette.
Ann Edliden / TT
13:00 | 2019-12-10
Marie Fredriksson, born Gun-Marie Fredriksson in 1958, grew up in Östra Ljungby in Skåne. In her memoir "The Love to Life" from 2016, she described growing up.
"We were forced to rent ourselves in a crowded, cramped house with only cold water. I spent my first years there. It was often cold there. he decided we needed to get something new. "
Daddy Gösta got a job as a land correspondent, "had a voice like Jussi Björling" and mother Inez worked at a jam factory. The family often had bad money. When Marie Fredriksson was seven years old, her oldest sister had begun to work and contribute to the livelihood, but on her way to buy her engagement dress she crashed with a milk car and died, 20 years old.
PICTURE: Janerik Henriksson / TT | The artists Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson are celebrating with cake that it is 25 years since Roxette's "The look" topped the US list (the Billboard list), after Fredriksson's concert at Circus in Stockholm. Stock Photography.
The death hit the family hard. Marie Fredriksson has described it as being that she often had to manage herself. In her late teens, the whole family moved to Halmstad, where she initially had plans to become an actor, but soon began as a singer in Strul, a band that got a record deal and arranged its own annual music festival.
PLAYED PROGG
In the late 1970s, Strul shared a rehearsal room with Per Gessles Golden Times in Harplinge outside Halmstad.
We were proggers. They were so nice and had order, we didn't, she told in Niklas Strömstedt's "Thank you for the music" 2013.
PICTURE: Fredrik Sandberg / TT | Marie Fredriksson sang when Princess Madeleine married Christopher O'Neill 2013. Stock Photography.
In 1981 she sang on the Golden Times "Nothing of what you need" and formed the band Mama's children together with her former band colleague Martin Sternhufvud, Anders Herrlin and Micke "Syd" Andersson. The band existed for a short time and Per Gessle, who thought Marie Fredriksson had too much talent "to be hidden behind a keyboard", fixed a play for producer Lasse Lindbom who offered her record contract as a solo artist at EMI.
SOLO SUCCESS
PICTURE: Bertil Ericson / TT | Roxette was formed in 1986 and released "Look sharp!" two years later. Stock Photography.
Lindbom and Fredriksson started a relationship and together wrote many of the songs on "Hot Wind" which came out in 1984. The first single was "Still smells love", which became a hit and which Fredriksson performed decades later at Princess Madeleine's wedding.
Two years after the solo debut Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson formed the duo Roxette. Their first album "Pearls of passion" reached second place on the Swedish album list and sold in 200,000 copies. Parallel to Roxette, Marie Fredriksson kept his solo career alive, releasing "After the Storm" and the single "Sparvöga" in 1989.
PICTURE: Bengt Eurenius / SvD / TT | Roxette with Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle performed at Skeppsholmen in Stockholm in 1987, in connection with the summer tour "Rock around the Kingdom". Stock Photography.
The breakthrough international came when the song "The look" from the album "Look sharp!" began climbing the American Billboard list and reached first place in 1989 - without the band having a record deal in the US. An American fan who had been an exchange student in Sweden had left the record to his local radio station and from there it had spread across the country.
"Stay home in Sweden" everyone else thought, but I didn't think so, she said.
FOUR LISTETTES
Now a number of hits followed, including Marie Fredriksson singing the bitterly sweet ballad "It must have been love" which happened to end up on the soundtrack to the low budget movie "Pretty woman" and became their third list in the US. Roxette would dot four in total.
In 1991 Roxette released the album "Joyride" which came to be sold in 11 million copies. The band toured all over the world. Marie Fredriksson met her husband, the musician Mikael Bolyos, and they married three years later, in 1994 and had two children. In 1996 she released the album "In a time like ours", where the single "Faith" became a hit.
In 2002, Marie Fredriksson collapsed in her home after a jogging round and it turned out that she, then 44 years old, had suffered a brain tumor. After the radiation treatment, she became visually impaired, difficult to walk and could not read and write. In 2006 she was declared healthy and three years later she was back on stage with Roxette for the first time since the illness. The following year, she and Per Gessle performed in conjunction with Crown Princess Victoria's wedding.
LEARN TO SPEAK
In 2013, she released "Nu!", Her first record with her own songs in Swedish in 17 years. In an interview with TT before the release, she said that after the illness she had to learn to speak - and even sing - again.
It was a great sadness. But I was so scared because I didn't know how it would be with everything. Within me, I felt that "I'll fix this, I don't have time to die yet". I said that often, even though the odds were bad, she told me.
In 2014–2016 Roxette conducted a long world tour, "XXX - the 30th anniversary tour", but in April 2016 it was announced that all planned gigs would be canceled. Marie Fredriksson had been discouraged from appearing by doctors. In 2018 Per Gessle conducted a European tour with Roxette without her.
I'm not trying to replace Marie, I can't and I have no reason to try. But unfortunately I do not think that we will be on stage together again, he told TT.