Roxette return with a new vocalist: 20 years ago she represented Sweden at Eurovision

Per Gessle, the surviving member of Swedish Roxette, revealed that he will return to the road to perform his band’s hits with a new vocalist: Lena Philipsson, pop star who, 20 years ago, represented Sweden at Eurovision with the song ‘It Hurts’ , having finished in fifth place.

Philipsson will therefore be the replacement for the original vocalist, Marie Fredriksson, who died in 2019, aged 61, after a long battle with a brain tumor that she had been diagnosed with in 2002. The duo Gessle/Fredriksson no longer gave a concert since 2016.

“It was a difficult decision to make”, confessed Gessle last Friday, in an interview with the Australian television program “Sunrise”, “my partner in Roxette, Marie, died in 2019, so I didn’t really know what to do with this catalog of songs.”

Assuming that he did not want to create a new musical duo, the musician explains that he decided to “hire a good friend, who is also a fantastic singer and performer”. “I don’t know if it’s the right time, but I feel like there’s a world out there that still likes our songs. I want to pay homage to the Roxette catalogue. It’s not about new music, but about old hits.”

Rehearsals, according to Gessle, have not yet started and the tour starts in 2025, with dates already announced for South Africa and Australia, and it is not yet known whether there will be other stops.

Founded in 1986, Roxette achieved great success in the following decade with songs such as ‘It Must Have Been Love’ (which was featured on the soundtrack of the film “Pretty Woman”), ‘Listen to Your Heart’, ‘The Look’, ‘Joyride’ or ‘Sleeping in My Car’.