Interviews

Tarja Turunen made her mark on the world as the frontwoman of Nightwish. Now she strikes out on her own with her solo debut 'My Winter Storm'. The album soared to the top spot in her native Finland and went gold in one day! To celebrate the upcoming US release of the album we asked Tarja to pick her favorite tracks from the disc and tell us a little about them. We kick off today with the song "Die Alive" as well as an overview of the album theme.

First she tells about the album theme: After I chose the first songs for the album among the many I received, I found a strange connection in their lyrics. A certain story popped up from the songs. Some key words appeared in more than one song and some of the songs exposed a sort of different characters in their lyrics. With few changes, nearly every song seemed to fit this story very nicely. At the same time, the story is very vague and the songs are still not connected with each other in any way. You can listen any of the songs out of the album and it will make sense on its own. But at the beginning it was easier to focus in the red line going through the album and was very inspiring for the kind of sound that I was looking for in every song. Also it helped me to create new songs for the album since I had a nice story in my head already from the beginning.

"Die Alive": This is a song about living every moment of your life fully. Is a fight song without any swords or blood. A fight to do what you want to do in your life, in a way that if you die tomorrow, you die alive. Not like many people that are already dead while they are still living. Jim Dooley added the feeling of a movie trailer in the middle part of the song.

Lost Northern Star:This was composed in Ibiza together with Michelle and Kiko. I wanted to have a heavier song in the album with more operatic vocals. It took some days to come up with this song and in the end the song has 74 tracks of vocals!
I had a lot of fun in creating harmonies and strange sounds with my voice. Mel Wesson added more power to the song with his crazy sounds. The story in the lyrics is beautiful, even though the music itself is really massive. We definitely like Rammstein and as homage I sang the line "my soul burns" that you would find familiar if you follow the band.

Sing for me: I received the song when the band was nearly done with the recordings of the album in Ireland. I heard it and immediately loved it. It fits perfectly to the complete sound and idea of the album with its orchestral and choir arrangements, spooky mood and gorgeous melodies. This was one of the few songs that I didn't change at all, which is quite amazing considering that I received it so late.

Minor Heaven: I have been asked already what means Minor Heaven. I don't think this question has an answer. MH is what you want it to be. I fell in love with the melody and I imagined the song as one of the beautiful lieds that I have been performing in my classical concerts. I asked my dear friend Izumi to play piano to reinforce that idea of mine. The song evolves into a bigger sound with orchestra and guitars and I do like the combination of them very much.

Our Great Divide: In my career I have performed several great ballads. I love ballads and I was looking for a song where I could feel myself free and flow with the music. Anders and Mattias played me an amazing melody and I added my touch to some parts of the song. We wrote the lyrics with Hanne during beautiful sunrises in Ibiza. It started as a love song...but I cannot say where it ended.

Boy and the Ghost: The song represents the dark spirit of the album. BATG grows little by little in an unexpected way that becomes massive and mind blowing. It has a strange and mysterious story in its lyrics. Music flows like in a musical. Is the best companion to Sing For Me. Like two parts of a same song, both in music and lyrics.

Poison: This Alice Cooper classic is still very much played in the rock radios in Finland. The lyrics are very funny if you consider a woman singing them. I cannot reveal myself as a die-hard fan from Alice Cooper, but I always liked this one and it also brings me back to my years as a teenager. We did quite many backing vocals in the studio with my friend Tea, my brother Toni and Daniel, the producer of the album. The original song has already a huge amount of backing vocals and it definitely took some time to get them done.
We produced the song to fit to the complete picture and sound of My Winter Storm. Mel Wesson did amazing ambience sounds and Alex, Doug, Earl, Torsten and Daniel were working very hard in the studio to make it sound fresh, but faithful to the original at the same time