Roxette have been setting the benchmark for pop performers during their Australian tour. This is how pop should be done, a real band playing real music.
Roxette - Photo By Ros O'Gorman
Since 1988 Maria Fredriksson and Per Gessle have delivered consistent quality pop hits and their live shows prove they have the goods.
Roxette are a great live band. Roxette are a real live band. It sounds weird having to say that but we have been so fooled by mime acts for the past decade that to actually see a real band playing real music was extremely refreshing.
We had an inkling Roxette’s popularity was understated when the first tickets went on sale. After initially being launched in a modest sized venue in one city, promoter Live Nation soon saw this was going to be bigger than anyway expected and upgraded the shows to arenas and a national tour.
In Melbourne they played two Rod Laver Arena shows and across Australia sold around 100,000 tickets.
The audience loved it too. They knew the words to most of the songs and sang along. Often Marie and Per reversed the polarity of lead vocal duties with the audience becoming the singers and the band becoming the audience. The audience and the artist were often one and the same at this Roxette gig.
The Roxette setlist only dabbled into the most recent album ‘Charm School’ twice. Both ‘Only When I Dream’ and the single ‘She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio)’ could have come from the 80s, 90s or naughties.
Check out the setlist for Melbourne, February 22, 2012:
Dressed For Success (from Look Sharp, 1988)
Sleeping In My Car
(from Crash Boom Bang, 1994)
The Big L
(from Joyride, 1991)
Wish I Could Fly
(from Have A Nice Day, 1999)
Only When I Dream
(from Charm School, 2011)
She’s Got Nothing On (But The Radio)
(from Charm School, 2011)
Perfect Day
(from Joyride, 1991)
Things Will Never Be The Same
It Must Have Been Love
(from Tourism, 1992)
Opportunity Nox
(from Pop The Hits, 2003)
7Twenty7
(from Have A Nice Day, 1999)
Fading Like A Flower (from Joyride, 1991)
Crash!Boom!Bang!
(from Crash Boom Bang, 1994)
How Do You Do!
(from Tourism, 1992)
Dangerous
(from Look Sharp, 1988)
(Band Presentation)
Joyride (introduced with “Waltzing Matilda”) (from Joyride, 1991)
Silver Blue
(b-side, 1988)
Spending My Time
(from Joyride, 1991)
The Look (from Look Sharp, 1988)
Listen To Your Heart (from Look Sharp, 1988)
Church Of Your Heart (from Joyride, 1991)
Roxette’s final Australian and New Zealand shows are:
Tonight, Brisbane, Entertainment Centre
February 25, Sydney, Entertainment Centre
February 28 and 29, Auckland New Zealand, Challenge Stadium
