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By: Christa Titus

(Music that is referenced in this review is hyperlinked to Amazon.com for your purchasing convenience. If a product is not hyperlinked, Amazon.com did not offer it at the time of publication.)

If former Nightwish singer Tarja is having the last laugh, she’s keeping it to herself.

Well, maybe not quite. Her animated spirits punctuate our conversation with lighthearted giggling, her energy unflagging even though it’s past 6 p.m. and she’s been on the phone all day doing interviews. Her voice is so melodic she nearly sounds as though she’s singing; it softens the stiff constructions she sometimes makes with her English.

Tarja is elated by the success of her solo debut, My Winter Storm, in her homeland of Finland and elsewhere in Europe. When it was released last November, it entered the Finnish album chart at No. 1, the first record by a solo artist to debut atop the list. It’s now platinum there (30,000 copies), gold in Russia (10,000 copies) and nearly gold in Germany (100,000). Finland also nominated her for an Emma Award (the equivalent of a Grammy) for best Finnish artist, and Germany nominated her for an Echo Award for most successful newcomer. Since its Feb. 26 release in the United States, it has sold 4,000 copies as of March 17, according to Nielsen SoundScan.


After her firing from Nightwish in 2005—via an open letter that pulled no punches in accusing her of diva attitude and behavior—the reception for My Winter Storm probably feels doubly warm. The album wasn’t thrown together in a fit of revenge, as Tarja had already been making a name on her own doing classical/operatic concerts and making guest appearances on albums by such artists, even doing some Christmas and chill-out music. The artwork speaks of her investment in the record. Photographs depict Tarja as four characters: the Queen of Ice, the Dead Boy, the Doll and the Phoenix, each conveyed with elaborate costuming. The Doll is stiff, staring and waxen-faced under a mop of blond curls; the Phoenix is awash in golden-orange light in her multilayered gown. Tarja explains of them below, “They are part of me and my personality, and they are like a fantasy on the other hand.”

“Fantasy” is a good descriptor for My Winter Storm. The first deep orchestral notes of lead-off track IWalkAlone indicate that a grand story is about to unfold, one fit for the silver screen. Instead of sticking with Nightwish’s trademark symphonic metal, Tarja has moved in the direction of popera, combining accessible song structures with choral arrangements. The sound remains dramatic—whether she’s singing a requiem for a lost child in BoyAndTheGhost or letting notes effortlessly waver in the beautifully sad Oasis—but with less guitars and practically no drums. She traverses from the me-against-the-world stance of IWalkAlone to a dark ballet on The Escape of the Doll
/MyLittlePhoenix, then flicks the rock switch for the punchy, climactic DieAlive, alternating from mood to mood without a hitch. It’s an entertaining experience theatrical enough to warrant popcorn.

Promotion for My Winter Storm has Tarja touring Europe in May and likely again at the end of the year, as well as South America in July/August. She divulges, “I can’t tell you for sure, but hopefully I’m coming in September to U.S.A., which is a very big dream of mine. I would really love to go there.” She’s also planning a run of live classical dates with friends from her study group; they anticipate visiting Asia around 2010. “That’s a rough plan, but I do not want to forget classical music,” she says. “That is very, very important part of my life.”

Despite her packed schedule, Tarja is already working on material for a new album and anticipates it arriving next year. She says with a laugh, “It sounds crazy, because the new album just got out, but in a way, I feel very energetic and I want to keep on going . . . I feel that it’s very nice to start the process for the new album. I have lots of ideas already, [but] not to change that much the direction or anything like that.”


She adds, “I have been working very hard and I keep on working very hard, and that is what I’m really loving to do, and now it’s my time in a way to show myself and show my personality and my interest in music for the people for the first time on my own, so this means a lot to me. And of course, all kinds of little success and all kinds of little positive things that happened of course makes me like . . .” She inhales deeply. “ ‘Ahhhhh! This is great!’ Because everything that I am facing every day, there are new stuff and I’m learning so much out of them, so I’m very happy.”

The Killing Words: On your Web site you mentioned you had a lot of songs to pick from for My Winter Storm. Do you think any of the ones you didn’t use will end up on the new album?
Tarja: Yes, I will work in these songs that I left out now for the first album. I will work on them a bit more. I didn’t have that much time to really concentrate. They have a certain feeling that is really touching me and they have this kind of message that I want to come up with, but they were not good in that time [when] I was really deciding which songs I definitely want to put on the first album.

TKW: You do concerts with classical pianists and other singers and you sing with symphonies, so you had already started to build your name as a solo performer, but was it more in the opera world that you were doing it?
Tarja: Yes, I have been touring with kind of a classical lineup and on my own before. I have been touring in South America, but basically doing only classical music and also in Europe, so yes, people knew me in that direction already and of course they knew me from Nightwish. But in a way, now, with My Winter Storm album, it’s my music now for the first time.
Seriously speaking, I love classical music, that is one side of me, but that doesn’t tell the whole story about me and my interests in music. So yes, I have done things before. I have been performing in musicals. The variety of people that have listened to me, the ages of the people, of the circumstances or the places or the situations, they have been very different. I have been going through situations that I was performing in a rock festival the day before and then next day I was in a church concert . . . so I have [laughs] been kind of doing interesting things, but that has been the biggest challenge for me, which I really love that, that I can do that. I makes me healthy, it keeps me going.

TKW: What is it that you enjoy about opera, and what do you enjoy about doing rock?
Tarja: They are so different situations, and of course, in both of them, music speaks, and that is for me also very important. The music touches me. I love that feeling and I love to flow with the feeling and emotions. So when I’m singing opera, I can be myself in a way that everything is going to be heard. There are no microphones, there are no amplifiers. There’s me and my voice . . . I love the difference when I go to rock concert or metal concert and performing there. It’s a show, there are many things that people can see and follow and yes, I can play around so much more with my voice. I can like, have so much fun. So, different situations. But they are very hard to compare. What is the thing that I really love most, or are there some similarities involved? Yeah, the music is, and the feeling is, and the performance itself in this case is, but, very, very different situations.


TKW: Was this your first time writing material for a record?
Tarja: Exactly. Seriously. Yes. I have been doing some songs for some other artists. For example, there is chill-out artist Schiller from Germany. I have been making songs with him. Small things here and there, but nothing seriously like album-wise or for myself. This is the first time for me to make songs and I got help from many other songwriters on this album.
It was for me the first time to open up myself for writing songs and definitely, you can’t believe how shy I was in the beginning. [laughs] I was so shy. I am, but I was not brave enough to open up myself for music and say, “OK, this is it. This is my song, do you like it or not?” I was so nervous to show the first songs for the people that have been doing this for 20 more years than me. But then these people, they received me very well. [laughs] They were kicking my ass, supporting me and telling me, “Come on, girl; you shouldn’t be that girl. You’re nervous and you just let yourself go and everything is fine, because there are no mistakes that you can do in music if you’re doing music in way that, come on, you can please people or you cannot.” And you can’t ever please everybody. And that was, I needed to question to myself. Just said, “OK, be brave and go for it,” and that was the beginning for me, and I’m very happy that I have my album now in my hands with the help of many people.

TKW: How do you feel about being the person in control of the whole project—not just the songwriting: the artwork, the performances. You’re in charge of the band that’s with you.
Tarja: Yes. Yes. Yes. I wanted to see if I could do this because so many things, as you said, there’s so many new things I need to face, even though I have been in the music business, for God’s sake, for over 10 years, and I’m very happy that I know so much about it already, how the business is going, how things are working.
I’m not, in a way, a new artist. On the other hand, of course, now, as a solo artist myself, I needed to face very many challenges and deciding on things and designing my own stuff and the way I like the things, and that was for me, giving so much freedom. First of all I enjoyed it very much that I can be part of this, I can be putting things out the way I like and yes, I worked out very well with the record company, Universal. With that I’m very satisfied for their help and collaboration . . . I just can’t imagine how hard it is for new artist to come up with their own ideas straight from the beginning ‘cuz there are so many people trying to get piece of you in a way if you don’t know.

TKW: The album isn’t a complete concept album, but there are some loose concepts going through it?
Tarja: Yes. I can’t call it a concept album, no, but the image and the music itself, they are very much connected, like story-wise and music-wise, they are connected. When I was writing the songs and I was [with] other songwriters, when they were offering me songs, I was in a way directing them, “OK, I have a story for myself that I want to change for the people to listen, even though there is not such a story in the album you can really truly follow.”
But yes, there was a story for me that helped me to create more music and it was my inspiration . . . I have been very much inspired by Paolo Coehlo, Brazilian writer, he’s writing his books a lot about how person should follow their dreams and fight for their dreams and things like that. Very positive things about life, and it has been my biggest inspiration in a way that also I understand that when [people] say . . . hard times, they always make you stronger [laughs], if they don’t kill you they make you stronger. I have faced some of these things in my life and I have seen that, OK, through the struggle, you go to the victory in a way that you win yourself and you win your fears, and this is the thing basically what I’m talking about in the new album.


TKW: What can you say about the four characters that are depicted in the album artwork?
Tarja: They are part of me and my personality, and they are like a fantasy on the other hand. All these kind of things, I have been writing like a painting of pictures and thinking about the nice images and that way I could go connect it because they were really inspiring me. And you know, where I got these four characters, they came from the first of hundreds of hundreds of songs that many, many songwriters were giving me . . . [when] I said, “OK, I’m gonna make a first album,” so many songwriters approached me and gave me their songs. And from those lyrics I read through hundreds of times and I listened to their songs many, many times. I got an inspiration and I took those characters. They just appeared there and it was for me a nice way of having a story, in a way . . . I took the idea from that then to make a video, and I gave the directions for the director of the video that I want to have this kind of story, and then the artwork and all the pictures that I’m appearing in these characters there. It has just been so much fun. I love movies, and this is for me a kind of a movie, you know? [laughs] A soundtrack of my life.

TKW: Which would you say out of those for characters is the most similar to you?[
Tarja: I think I’m the Phoenix more than anything else, yes. I think it’s for me, in this case, is a very strong character, it’s very delicate character, enjoys of all the beauty in the world in a way after seeing lack of these things in life or after going through a struggle or something like that. And in my life, I have gone through those kind of things, in my personal life, in my career life, so it’s a good thing. I’ve been like more connected into this.

TKW: Besides songwriting for the first time, what were the biggest challenges in getting the record together?
Tarja: The whole organization of the people, getting everybody involved. That was the kind of the biggest thing, and maybe even more challenging was making people to understand what I really was looking for sound-wise for the album. When I started to speak about cineomagraphic sound, as I told you before, I’m a big fan of films, so my goal was to approach a kind of a cinematographic sound.

TKW: You having done many different things musically. What other kind of musical ambitions you have?
Tarja: To be honest, my wish would be to explore a bit more film music . . . That would be lovely, because depending on my mood, I’m listening a lot of film music nowadays, and it gives me goosebumps. I just love to relax with film music or instead of film music, classical music, but really too, I feel that I would be able to do music like that myself because I’m so much, I’m a very emotional person. I feel lot when I’m listening to music, I always get very, very emotional with the music, so it is something that I have already tried out. But seriously, I would love explore a bit more if there would be a chance.

TKW: What would you say music brings out of you emotionally?
Tarja: I’m very emotional person, so depending on the music and my mood, what kind of music I put on my CD player. [laughs] Very different. I’m listening to rock or metal, of something very energetic in the mornings if I feel tired [or] that I am not ready for the day. I listen [to] that kind of music, make me feel more powerful or happier or ahhh! And then if I want to relax, [it’s] with something more quiet without any words and just orchestra music.


TKW: Considering that you’re working to get established on your own, do you think you’re going to be doing any Nightwish material?
Tarja: Yes, I have been doing already, I have for sure. I wouldn’t see any reason not to. [laughs] I was touring already in Europe in so-called warmup tour last year in the end of the year and I was doing Nighwish songs, of course. Yah, it’s for me, it was a very important part of my life, Nightwish and their music—and our music. It was really, really important part of my life and I do not see any reason not to take some songs out of our repertoire. We had many, many albums done and I was part of them and I’m really proud of those years. So yes, I will be doing some, but it’s basically anyway my own concert and I’m very happy about my own material, so [laughs] definitely there will be some [of it] somewhere there, but mostly it’s about my music now. [laughs again]

TKW: Can you address anything about your leaving Nightwish? How do you feel about it now as opposed to when it occurred?
Tarja: Yeah! Yeah! Well, time has passed by. If I go back into that time when it happened, I got that letter from the band and all the media hassle after that, and it took weeks in Finland. It was really not [an] easy period of my life at all. I would say that it was a terrifying, terrifying month in a way, only that one month, that I was trembling the whole month. I was really having a bad time of my life and it was not easy . . . that public pressure that was so big and never expected . . . But on the other hand now, I have been growing as an artist, as a person, also a lot after those times, and I have seen life from the different perspective . . .
Still today, I do not agree with the thing that happened or the way it [ended], my career with the band, so that was a very, not too nice thing, you know [laughs], what happened, the way it happened. So, definitely, definitely I do not have any hard feelings. As I said, I’m very proud of those years and I wish them all the best and the success and everything, all the best, seriously, from the bottom of my heart. But yeah, it’s very good time for me, very good time for them, definitely.

TKW: Do you think there might have been something that gave them the impression that they had, even if that was not the impression you were trying to give them, or do you not see anything like that? Do you think they misinterpreted things you were doing?
Tarja: Oh, that is something that I will question all my life, I think. [laughs] There were many, you know, I can’t just think that all of this happened because of me, that there was so many problems in the band already for several, several years, and we were never able to communicate between the band members, you know. There were always lack of communication, and the way they decided to have its end, so it’s very, very difficult, difficult situation and I still don’t understand, but the thing is that, I leave them as the subject is, I leave it as it is. I don’t want to get into that because it was enough difficult for me, so, I believe that time tells.

TKW: Have you spoken to any of them since that happened?
Tarja: No. No. We are not in contact now, not at all.


TKW: I couldn’t help but noticing with your mentioning of the Phoenix character and its song, and IWalkAlone on your album, if they were drawn from what had happened.
Tarja: No, actually not. There is not such a song at all about what happened between me and my band before, because I didn’t wanna go into that any more. I was, of course, it’s about me also. As I said, I’m writing about my own person and what has happened to me in my life and my interests and my personal things, but the thing is that IWalkAlone song talks about my fans and that is the most important [thing] . . . I didn’t write [the song] myself. It was a song that was written by a couple of Swedish guys, and I discovered even the whole title from my album My Winter Storm through that song. [The album] began through that very important song for me, as when the record company said this could be the first single, I really agreed with them because My Winter Storm is my fans, and they have been really keeping me going.

TKW: What song on the album best represents where you are in life at this point?
Tarja: I have to tell you that the whole album as it is, it’s very personal, and if I should only pick up one song from the album that could represent me right this moment, maybe, still I would say, lyrical-wise, maybe that is TheReign. It’s very beautiful story of going somewhere new in life and still I am heading to somewhere new. Like in a way, everybody of us is heading to somewhere new and unknown. I’m also doing that, so let’s see what will happen. [laughs]