Commanding female vocalists were never more
popular than in the late 1980s, and for a time
Marie Fredriksson , whose voice could blister
paint or seduce a kitten , was one of the biggest.
The singing half of the Swedish power-pop duo
Roxette, she piloted them, with guitarist Per
Gessle, to near ubiquity, and 75m record sales.
Her widescreen delivery of their four biggest
songs – It Must Have Been Love , Joyride, The
Look, and Listen to Your Heart – helped to send
each to No 1 in the US, a country rarely receptive
to Swedish groups, even those singing in English.
Britain and the rest of Europe also succumbed,
and Fredriksson, who has died of cancer aged 61,
was one of pop’s most recognisable frontwomen
in Roxette’s 1989‑91 golden hour.

Even those who found the group’s music
insubstantial – a view that has recently been
undergoing reappraisal – agreed that Fredriksson
could sell a song. They included the New York
Times, which panned the duo’s first Manhattan
concert in 1992 (“Roxette won’t be accused of too
much originality … Hearing Roxette could make a
listener long for Abba”), while praising
Fredriksson: “[Their] main asset is Marie
Fredriksson, a singer with a sob in her voice
[and] a platinum-blond Billy Idol hairdo.” In fact,
the hairdo was closer to Annie Lennox ’s
streamlined crop, and Fredriksson was as
angular and statuesque as the Eurythmics singer.
She and Gessle probably did not engineer their
look to resemble Lennox and her musical partner
Dave Stewart , but there was an undeniable
similarity, adding to the perception that Roxette
were lightweights. “We don’t care what they
say,” Gessle maintained in 1990. “We’re used to
people saying our music sounds like crap.”