Marie Fredriksson
Singer in the Swedish pop duo Roxette who had a string of hits including ‘It Must Have Been Love’
MARIE Fredriksson, who died last Monday aged 61, was the singer and face of Roxette, the Swedish pop duo who achieved huge international success in the late 1980s and early 1990s with singalong hits such as The Look, Listen to Your Heart, and It Must Have Been Love, which featured prominently in the film Pretty Woman.
Roxette, named for a Dr Feelgood song, came together in 1986 when Fredriksson, a spiky-haired blonde, began collaborating regularly with Per Gessle. The two knew each other from having been in earlier bands and had gone on individually to score many hits in the Swedish charts. But Gessle, who played guitar and synthesiser and would write most of the group’s songs, knew that performing in English would bring his music to a wider audience.
That recognition, in the telling, depended in part on luck. An American exchange student from Minneapolis, Dean Cushman, liked the band’s second LP, Look Sharp! (1988), so much that on his return home he urged it on his local radio station. Roxette had yet to gain much of a profile outside Sweden and EMI America had recently decided not to sign them.
The radio station also rejected the album, but when Cushman went to collect it he bumped into the director of programmes, who admired the cover art. The station played the first track on the record — The Look — and the listener response was overwhelming. Within two months, it was No 1 in the US (and reached No 7 in the UK) and topped the hit parade in two dozen other countries. The LP would go on to sell 9m copies.
Further hits followed. The pop-rock song Listen to Your Heart gave them a second No 1 in America, and Dangerous reached No 2, by which time they were drawing comparisons with Eurythmics. They were then asked to contribute a song to a film provisionally entitled $3,000. Lacking the time to write one, Gessle dusted off what had been a Christmas tune for the German market but which in 1987 had gone largely unnoticed there.
The director Garry Marshall liked It Must Have Been Love so much that he gave the heart-wrenching power ballad more than a minute of film in what became Pretty Woman (1990). It gave Roxette their third US No 1 (No 3 in the UK) and by 2012 it had been played more than 5m times on the air there. Other smashes included Dressed for Success, Fading Like a Flower, and Joyride — their fourth US No 1 in three years.
With eventual sales of 60m records they would become the second most successful Swedish act after Abba.
In 2002 Roxette agreed to split but the day before the announcement of their last concerts Marie Fredriksson collapsed, fracturing her skull. A malignant brain tumour was discovered and she spent much of the rest of her life combating its effects.
Gun-Marie Fredriksson was born on May 30, 1958 at Ossjo, in Skane, southern Sweden. Her father, originally a farmer, became a postman when the family moved to nearby Ostra Ljungby.
Her mother worked in a factory and, the youngest of five children, Marie was often left alone at home or with her siblings, from whom she learnt to play music. She also sang in church.
As her vocal talents became better known Marie Fredriksson emerged as a solo performer in Sweden in the mid-1980s. Her second solo LP won the award as record of the year there in 1986 and for four years in a row she would be voted best Swedish female singer.
During her initial recovery from her illness, she was left blind in one eye for a time and unable to speak. It was only after being encouraged by fans to take to the stage in 2009 while watching Gessle play in Holland that she rediscovered her desire to sing live.
Thereafter, she and Gessle released new music and embarked on a world tour. In 2010 they performed at the wedding of the Crown Princess of Sweden.
Marie Fredriksson’s cancer returned, however, and in 2016 she retired on medical advice.
She is survived by her husband and their son and daughter.