Per Gessle has been offered the chance to write a song for next year’s Swedish Song Contest. But he is doubtful.

I’m fundamentally week at writing that kind of music, he says. Last week he got the envelope with the invitation to contribute with a song for the competition next spring.

But he hasn’t even opened the envelope yet.

I got a smiliar one last year. You need to have a song that fits into that context and I don’t have it, he says.

At the moment Per is completely occupied with writing songs for Roxette’s coming album. An album, which he thinks, won’t be finished before Christmas 1998.

It has been so long since the last time I worked with Roxette, that’s why I want to take a lot of time for it, he says.

Per has written songs for the Swedish trials before.

In 1980 Lasse Lindbom sang “För dina bruna ögons skull”, a song which didn’t make onto a GT-album. In 1986 he wrote the text (he emphasizes that he didn’t write the chorus) to Lena Philipsson’s contribution “Kärleken är evig”.

I have absolutely no prejudice against the music in that competition, on the contrary I think it’s quite an entertaining event. Who knows, “Gä och fiska” could have been one of the songs last year. And I find Wille Crafoord’s song damn funny, Per says.

The hesitation is more about that he thinks his music doesn’t fit in.

It’s still typical schlager and I’m bad at writing that kind of music. Now I’m not particularly fond of the idea. But who knows, perhaps I get a kick some day.