Roxette perform It Must Have Been Love on tour in 2012
Marie was the ultimate rock chick superstar with cropped bleached hair, leather stage clothes and a powerful, raw voice. She had started out in Sweden's late 1970s punk scene in the band Strul and then released her debut solo album Het Find (Hot Wind) in 1984. The singer-songwriter (and talented artist) continued to record and release her own Swedish-language material, including eight solo albums, throughout her life, admitting she was never comfortable writing lyrics in English. She formed Roxette with Per Gessle in 1986, who had no such problem. Their first album Pearls of Passion was a number two hit in Sweden but failed to make any impact elsewhere. Two years later, they were one of the biggest bands in the world. Their "joyride" was about to begin – with just as many lows as highs.
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Roxette's 1998 album Look Sharp! gave them two US number ones, The Look and Listen To Your Heart, and a number two, Dangerous. It sold nine million copies worldwide.
Even greater success followed the inclusion of non-album track It Must Have Been Love on the 1990 Pretty Woman soundtrack, which was a worldwide hit and a third US number one.
The album Joyride was released on March 28 the following year, selling a whopping 11 million copies. The lead single gave the band yet another number one in the US, followed by number two hit Fading Like A Flower.
Yet, behind the scenes, Marie had become increasingly unhappy and lonely as Roxette’s fame and success grew. She later admitted she had been ready to quit.
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Marie met her husband, keyboardist Mikael "Micke" Bolyos, during the Australian leg of Join the Joyride! in December 1991.
She later said: "If [we] hadn't met, I don't know if I would have been able to continue in Roxette much longer. I couldn't handle the personal side of life on tour. I was hanging out in bars, drinking too much.
"I was sad a lot of the time and had a hard time with the press, when I always had to be nice and say the right things, always having to be available to everybody, always putting on a smile and being happy.
"Marie Fredriksson the performer had grown in stature, at the expense of Marie the private person. I had less and less space to be myself. And when I was myself I felt uncertain, small and lost."
They married in 1994 at a very small ceremony with only their closest family in attendance. Not even Per was invited – a source of major tension for some time after.