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Tarja Turunen



She walks alone



Prologue
Tarja Turunen
Yo
Tarja Turunen
u recorded a version of “I walk Alone” together with In Extremo. How did such an idea occur? Why In Extremo?

In Extremo… It actually appeared that Universal Music Germany were giving me the idea that how would I like the idea of making a remix of “I Walk Alone” with In Extremo. And it was a nice idea, and I thought that they could come up with something very personal like having some folk character in this song and it worked out really nice. I’ve never met the guys from In Extremo, when they were working on this song, but it’s incredible how one song can be changed by some other artist, how he sees the song. And it’s been very great to see that. Now from “I Walk Alone” there have been done three different versions – one with Mel Wesson, one with Chris Vrenna (Tweaker remix – add.). They are all very different.

You covered a song by Alice Cooper,
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“Poison”. Why did you choose this artist and this song?

Well it was a funny coincidence. I wanted to have one cover on this album for sure and it was so hard for me really to make my decision (laughs) about the song. My friends were helping me, the record company was trying and we were talking about it for a very long time. And then one day – it was in April or May – I was driving in Finland with my car, listening rock radio and Alice Cooper’s “Poison” was playing four or five times in one day (laughs) and I was like, “Wow, this is the song!” And I started to play with ideas how I should make this song for my album and how I should get away a bit from this 80-s feeling of this song and how also the song should fit for me, and what should I do to make it characterize me as an artist. Then I was thinking of getting rid of the original guitar sound and adopt it for m
Tarja Turunen
e, as I liked it. And things like that. And it really worked out! And I had a good time in the studio.

By the way, on the back vocals on the song “Poison” a male vocals can be heard. Whose vocals is these? Is it your brother Tony Turunen?

Yes, yes it’s my brother. He is also touring with me now so he is with me in my tour in Europe, coming in Moscow too, pretty soon, in a couple of days. We are really looking forward and you’ll hear him, he’s a really good singer and he has a very beautiful voice.

In your clip “I walk Alone” you have a very interesting make-up. Who came up with the idea to make you up this way?

It was me. (laughs) I was having these characters in my mind and they are appearing somehow in the album too and then I got the characters from the video director Jörn Heitmann. He came with the story – it
Tarja Turunen
was collaboration between me and director – really nice. But the make-up… I was selecting you know – I have been following fashion magazines, and I have a really big bunch of fashion magazines at home (laughs) and I was thinking about the make-up, a very strange make-up, as a wanted to have a VERY strange make-up for the clip to make it really spooky and strange and then I found out some really strange make-up from some fashion magazine. Then I showed this picture to my make-up artist who is also here with me on the tour. She has been making also my make up for my latest pictures. So she is behind my make-up. (laughs) And she is really great. She does a really good job and we were really designing all these things together.

Continuing the theme of this clip. Who was the author of the plot? What did you want to say by this clip? Who are these children and what do
Tarja Turunen
they symbolize?

First of all Jörn Heitmann, the director, I chose him, because I always liked him cinematographic style. He’s making the videos like short movies, I like that very much, because of this kind of spirit atmosphere of the movie going on in my album also - I was working closely to the film-music people in this regard. And I wanted video somehow also to be connected with the album really. And I had these characters in my mind and I wanted to play around with them. For me it was a very big challenge to be able to act in the video the way I do and to work with Jorn. He gave me the story. Well, it’s a fantasy, it’s not a real story and it’s not having such a connection with “I Walk Alone”. “I Walk Alone” story for me means more or less … it’s about “My Winterstorm”. “I Walk Alone” song is telling how important “My Winterstorm” is for me, my people, m
Tarja Turunen
y fans. They are my “Winterstorm”. Because they really have been holding me so that I “would never be gone”. That’s the most important thing in the song. The video is not so much connected with the story and the song itself. But it was a nice story to play around in the videos! (laughs) It’s fantasy.

Has this song something to do with the fact that you’ve began a solo carrier, so now “you walk alone” so to say. Is the title symbolic?

No, it doesn’t have this kind of meaning you know – what happened with me and the band and that I’m no longer singing in the band. It’s not anything to do with that. Since I myself didn’t write this song, it was written by Anders Wollbeck, Mattias Lindblom, Harry Sommerdahl. They wrote this song and over one year ago, or even more, year and a half ago, something like that, I really thought that it fit “My Winterstorm”
Tarja Turunen
album and I liked thast Mozart requiem in the background. That’s really the reason I chose this song to be in my album. So it doesn’t have this kind of symbolism behind it, nothing to do with my past.

I noticed that on your album there are several intros. For instance “Ite Missa Est” opens the song “I Walk Alone”, “Seeking for the Reign” overflows into “The Reign”, “The Escape of the Doll” to the song “My Little Phoenix”, “Sunset” to “Damned and Divine”. Why do you need so many introductions to the songs? It’s rather unusual…

Yeah, I just wanted to make it different. I just wanted to have some kind of connection in pack, you know, and it reflects the way I worked with the songs. In the booklet you can also see that it’s something to do with fantasy, with cinema movie. So also these introductions for the songs are for fun, just to make it different.
Tarja Turunen


Was it difficult for you to write songs? In your previous band you didn’t have to compose…

No, it was beautiful. But of course it requires always a lot of courage to be able to write songs and music and when I sat down to my piano I started to play around with the melody, to play around with the ideas. I had to get some support, I worked with great teachers. There are some writers who are appearing in the album, and they really helped me a lot. And that was a great thing, because now already I know that I have a talent in me and that I must have courage to let myself create. Well, it’s just to be free, and to feel a lot and to let these emotions come out, to give what I have. It’s happening in “My Winterstorm”. And now I already have some ideas for the next album. (laughs)

On your new album there’s a song “Oasis” which having an En
Tarja Turunen
glish title is written in Finnish. Why?

That is my song and to be honest I couldn’t find a title in Finnish that would present the idea of the song. Really. That if I had put the word “oasis” in Finnish it would have lead you directly to “keidas” (laughs) and I didn’t want people to have a misconception or to understood the song wrongly, you know. “Oasis” for me is inner piece. It means a good feeling inside you and anyone should from time to time to be able to escape from reality where we are living, or in other words we should find that inner piece in ourselves. So the lyrics are in Finnish, it’s very poetic, but the title is in English (laughs). There was no way for me to find it in Finnish. And of course I’ll be doing some songs in future in some Spanish even and singing in English. Yes, for sure.

Yeah, I’ll definitely be recording in Finnish,
Tarja Turunen
something in Spanish, but English is my main language when it comes to singing and I believe that I’ll be continuing making albums in English.

You worked with an American producer this time. Did the result live up to your expectations?

I liked to work with him very much. We were working very closely and he was a producer that really could understand me as an artist and that was the very important fact that I discovered already at the early process, when we started to work together and it would have been a disaster for me to work with a person that would have led the project into very different direction than I would have liked. So we were always working together discussing things, changing ideas, and he put my way in seeing things in words. He told about it all the people we were working with, all the musicians, he directed the people with my ideas, giving them the idea which I wanted to have in the end. That was a very good collaboration between me and Daniel. So I’m very happy with him.

In general the new album turned out to be rather different in songs. The material doesn’t stick to one and the same style. Was it your intention from the very beginning or did it happen quite by chance and you were trying different styles?

No, it was my intension; I knew that that this album won’t be the one that will be categorized. I didn’t want to make the album with can be categorized, because it wouldn’t have the whole story about me as an artist, as a singer. And my interest is not only that I want to make a heavy-metal album or only make a classical album, or pop or rock album. I have been doing so many things all together you know for so many years, I wouldn’t really tell the whole story if I made an album which could really be categorized. That’s the challenge. And it’s the way I really wanted to have this, because the overall sound is connecting the songs together, and the spirit and the atmosphere is there. It was done not to break the line between songs, and even though the songs are different.

What program are you going to perform on tour? Will you sing only the material from the new album or the old stuff as well?

Now I have had already two concerts – one in Berlin and one in Budapest. And believe me those were really beautiful concerts. We were all very happy together with the band, the atmosphere was amazing and we were really having a lot of fun. In the Moscow concert you’ll hear “My Winterstorm” of course, plus some songs from my Christmas album, because we are getting close to Christmas time, not that Christmas kind of songs, but something like that. (laughs), and also some songs from my Nightwish time definitely, but you know the main thing is me with my concert, with “My Winterstorm” album. But still it was a very nice beginning.
14 äåê 2007
the End


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