The untold truth of Roxette

For a few precious years when the world was young and the internet wasn't really a thing yet, an entity known as Roxette ruled the earth. As the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, the dynamic Swedish duo of the golden-voiced Marie Fredriksson and the raspy, 1980s-haired guitarist/songwriter/co-vocalist Per Gessle crafted a rapid-fire string of unavoidable hits, from the stomping pop rock of "The Look," "Joyride," and "Dressed for Success" to a significant portion of those weirdly dramatic ballads the era loved so much. They were what happens when an apparent one-hit wonder refuses to back down once their huge chart-topping song stops gaining traction, instead stubbornly churning out hit after hit after hit after hit after ... well, you get the drill.

In the end, Roxette weren't quite ABBA, but they sure weren't Lou Bega, either. They might rarely get nods from critics on various "greatest bands of all time" lists, but if you were alive during their heyday (or if you just like to listen to retro stuff), you can almost certainly hum along to quite a few of their songs. But who were these mysterious Swedes? What made their hit-writing pen so unfathomably sharp? And what have they been up to since they stopped ruling the airwaves? There's only one way to find out. Let's take a look at the untold truth of Roxette.