TARJA TURUNEN Discusses Favorite Tracks From 'My Winter Storm'

Former NIGHTWISH singer Tarja Turunen picked her favorite tracks from her recently released solo disc, "My Winter Storm", and spoke a little about them in an interview that can be found on antiMUSIC.

Regarding the overall album theme, she said, "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."

"My Winter Storm" is scheduled for release in the U.S. on February 26, 2008. The CD will be made available in two exclusive U.S. versions via Fontana: the standard and deluxe editions (the latter featuring extra tracks not released elsewhere, as well visually stimulating bonus DVD content).

Tarja filmed a video for her next solo single, "Die Alive", on December 9, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. Check photos from the video shoot at this location.

"My Winter Storm" was produced by Daniel Presley (FAITH NO MORE, JEWEL, THE BREEDERS), who has been joined in the studio by a truly stellar line-up of musicians: Doug Wimbish on bass (LIVING COLOUR, ANNIE LENNOX, JOE SATRIANI, JEFF BECK, MADONNA, ROLLING STONES), Alex Scholpp on electric guitars (FARMER BOYS) and Earl Harvin on drums (SEAL, PET SHOP BOYS, AIR), a player personally selected by Tarja after she saw him stealing the show at a SEAL concert. Keyboards and programming, meanwhile, are being provided by Torsten Stenzel, whose previous credits include NELLY FURTADO, MOBY, TINA TURNER, VANESSA MAE and more.

Fan-filmed video footage of Tarja Turunen's November 27, 2007 concert in Budapest, Hungary can be viewed below.