"we don't want to be confused with Milli Vanilli", begins Per Gessle of Roxette. "We really want to tour Europe and America and establish Roxette as a rock band. Everybody thinks we're sitting in the studio with computers doing all the music, but that's not the case at all."

This concern is not undue, bearing in mind the history of mainland European pop. Roxette are Swedish and painfully aware of the distrust the rest of the world feels for European bands and are doing their best to dispel the "one hit wonder" tag. Their single 'The Look' reached no.1 in America, and the Top 10 in most other countries. Now they're looking to repeat the feat with 'Dressed For Success'.

"In a way, the success of 'The Look' was a problem", Per begins. "It's much easier to follow up a number two. But this is our 10th or 11th year in the business and we're not trying to push anything. 'The Look' is just a song and we'll release a new single and if it happens it happens. You can't really speculate or think too much about it, you just do what you think you're good at and see what happens. We try to have a good organisation behind us with the record company and management and publishing stuff, but when it comes down to it, it's a matter of attitude. If you want to do Italian disco you should do it, but we don't want to do that."

Per and his singing partner Marie Fredriksson have known each other for 12 years. They met in a small village on the West coast of Sweden called Halmstad, which is where Per still lives. They were both in other bands at the time, supporting each other in their careers before making Pearls Of Passion, their first album as Roxette in 1986. Per now admits that their debut suffered from a relatively weak production, compared to the harder, more raunchy follow-up Look Sharp.

"The reason for that is that we did a big tour in '87 with the first album," he begins "and it was a real problem, because most of the songs were sequenced with a lot of synthesisers. This time round we tried to do a lot more guitar orientated stuff because we want to tour a lot and we want to play live. You get really stuck if you have to have a sequencer on every song on stage. It's OK if you have it on five or six out of 20 or something, but if you have it all the time you can't improvise at all. Marie does 80% of the vocals and she really wants to do different things every night and improvise a lot, and when you're stuck with 64 bars you wind up with problems all the time."

Playing live is an important part of the Roxette philosophy. In a recent EMI press release, Marie was quoted as saying "it's difficult to appreciate fully what we're about without seeing our show. Playing live is how we communicate best and what we look forward to most." Per takes up the story: "It's always good to work it the hard way - when you're starting out you should play live a lot in order to make all the mistakes you really have to make. Today, most teenagers sit at home playing with synthesisers and other machines, but in the future, those that stand out will be the people who can really perform and still do all the writing as well."

Having emerged from a market as small as Sweden, Roxette feel they can pass on their self confidence to other artists in a similar position, showing them why they shouldn't give up and that with persistence, it can be done.

Having said that, the international success of 'The Look' was due mainly to a combination of lucky breaks.

"We released the album in Scandinavia in October, and tried to get a release in the States but everyone turned it down", Per reveals. "An American exchange student picked up the CD when he was visiting Sweden, and he went up to a radio station in Minneapolis just before Christmas, and asked them to play a song from the album. They played 'The Look' and really liked it and from there it snowballed all over America. Suddenly all the major labels were chasing us."

The single entered the Billboard Top 50 (based on radio play as well as sales) before the band even had an American record deal, and very shortly afterwards EMI America snapped them up. Despite their current wave of popularity, the band aren't looking to cash in by releasing a hastily recorded followup album.

"We're rehearsing and touring until this year is over and then we'll get back to writing, probably starting a new album in the spring", Per reveals. "Today we have two or three ideas for songs, but I think it's going to take a lot of time. The writing of Look Sharp took 18 months from start to finish. In a way you shouldn't release anything under pressure, but the competition is so hot you can't afford to wait too long. We don't try to spend too much time in the studio. We try to be very organised in everything we do. Some bands spend months and all their advances in the studio, but we try to do it the opposite way."

If and when it does appear, the follow-up will be hard pushed to repeat the success of Look Sharp. Roxette appear very relaxed about their new-found fame, but that's hardly surprising bearing in mind they've been huge in Sweden for years. Milli Vanilli they most certainly are not.