In Memoriam – Marie Fredriksson – 1958-2019

I don’t know when you first got in contact with the voice of Marie Fredriksson. For me, as a swede, she’s always been there. As I’m starting to get older and older every year, I realize that many of the artists I’ve been listening to aren’t that much older than me and yet they start to drop off one by one. Marie Fredriksson was a pop-artist in Sweden long before she reached international success with Per Gessle as the rock duo Roxette. As a matter of fact, I think that her amazing voice comes out better in some of the Swedish songs. Sparvöga is indeed a favorite tune.

But for the world, Roxette’s music is what singer Marie Fredriksson is connected to. I have no doubt that she had a big part in the success of the band. Come to think of it, something I learned recently was that Roxette had a really tough time breaking through to success. Not even Look Sharp was a huge success before a regular joe sent a copy of the album to a radio station in USA and urged them to play it on the radio. And they actually didn’t before he got tired of waiting and wanted his CD back if they weren’t gonna play it anyway, Then the station-manager (or whoever it was) felt bad and listened to it. Of course, the rest is history. Per and Marie got to live their international dream for a few years.

Now the Swedish songbird will be silent – forever…

Marie Fredriksson was 61 years old – rest in peace!