Maybe my strange humility was the reason why my mother brought me to my very first concert. We would see a hot and modern band in the frenziest of arenas; Globe. I was ten years old and was most looking forward to seeing the big white ball from the inside. I barely remembered the building afterwards, but the concert ... Oh, oh, oh. It came to change me.
In 1991, Roxette was at the peak of her career and toured the world with her third album Joyride. And in September they were in the Globe. Some of the songs I had heard before and probably liked a bit, but I had never been able to imagine how taken I would be to hear Marie Fredriksson's voice live. That music could feel so much!
Then began the disintegration of my first Roxette mix and a lifelong love for the music of the strong emotions began. Roxette's songs are saturated with emotions, emotions that are not primarily in the lyrics but in how the songs were performed by Marie Fredriksson, in her rather raspy, wry voice.
Since my first Roxette concert, Marie Fredriksson's voice has followed me through life. Nothing accompanies a broken teenage heart better than Roxette's So Far Away, both in the original version of the debut Pearls of passion and in the slightly harsher interpretation of the Tourism record.
Marie Fredriksson's great masterpiece, the solo album The Constant Journey from 1992, is an obvious soundtrack to the hardships of adulthood. There the songs are tuned in the same tone as the break-up and loneliness of adulthood, and nothing comfort as good as when Sweden's best singer puts words and tone in the dark.
For me, Roxette and Marie Fredriksson's voice was the companion to music that really feels. Since my first Roxette concert, I prefer not to listen to music unless it gives me goose bumps or teary eyes, and when Roxette became my favorite band in 1991, it was the first and perhaps only time I have been in tune with my contemporary taste.