ROXETTE | 25 Songs, 25 Stories: Behind the Music

A college student handed a CD to a Minneapolis radio station on a whim. Within hours, "The Look" was on the air. Within months, Roxette were number one in thirty countries.

That's the story you know. This book tells the ones you don't.

25 Songs. 25 Stories. goes inside the music — the studio sessions that went wrong and produced something better, the guide vocal recorded in fury that nobody dared re-record, the Christmas single that sat forgotten for two years before a Hollywood film made it immortal, the dummy lyrics that Per Gessle tried for months to replace and eventually surrendered to. Every chapter focuses on a single Roxette song: how it was written, how it was recorded, and what it cost.

Because behind seventy-five million records and four American number-one singles were two people from a small Swedish town who were friends for forty years, made music together without ever dating or fighting or burning down what they'd built — and who were separated, in the end, by something no hit single could prevent.

Per Gessle called some of these songs throwaways. Marie Fredriksson greeted others with a single syllable of scepticism. This book treats every one of them with honesty and affection — because pop music, when it's this good, deserves both.

Perfect for fans of music history, pop storytelling, and the art behind the hit.