Musicals and metal collide in Tarja Turunen’s Slay list.
She loves her opera and metal in equal measure. She should try combining them sometime…
“WHITNEY HOUSTON WAS my idol when I was a young girl. My singing teacher would make me sing soul songs from the age of 12, and the power in Whitney’s voice was incredible. I tried singing Greatest Love Of All at school concerts but the high notes were a struggle and I got a sore throat, but that song led me to find a vocal teacher. My parents started taking me to see plays at the theatre and I loved musicals like ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’s Phantom Of The Opera. Sarah Brightman was one of the most influential singers of my youth and I always wondered how a soprano could sing those high notes and how I’d love to be able to sing them one day… a few years later, I could! I always thought I’d become an opera singer, but I suddenly accepted the challenge of metal music which opened a new world for me. PETER GABRIEL and KATE BUSH’s song Don’t Give Up meant the world to me at that time – I didn’t want to give up my studies in classical music but I also didn’t want to give up this new challenge in my life.
“The GLADIATOR soundtrack, particularly Now We Are Free, is one of the most beautiful musical pieces in general, not just in movie scores. It hit me so hard and it was totally inspiring but I couldn’t walk out of the cinema after watching it, I remember being stuck in my chair and I couldn’t find my legs because I was weeping so hard. I also think Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the greatest songs ever written in musical history. I listened to it in my youth, realising QUEEN introduced the world to opera and masses of people across the world were singing those operatic vocals in this incredible piece of art that nobody wanted to release as the single! They followed their hearts and I realised as a young girl that I could also combine two styles of music just like them.
“When I was studying at university in Germany, RAMMSTEIN’s song Reise, Reise was released and I felt connected not only to the German lyrics but also to the power in their guitars. I started to get very interested in their production and how they made their music sound so good because it was something extraordinary at that time. They were the first influential metal band I dared to listen to, that’s where my metal career started. When I later left Nightwish, there was no other way for me but to leave Finland, too. I was asked a few years ago to do a TV commercial in Finland where they gave me headphones and played music to film my reaction on a close-up camera. They played SIBELIUS’s Finlandia and I started crying like crazy because it sounded like my home country. I went through my entire life during that song – it was an unbelievable experience that made me realise how much it hurt to leave my country behind.
“IN FLAMES were a great influence on me with their guitars and live shows and Alias led me to become a huge fan, to the point I worked with their founder and [ex-guitarist] Jesper Strömblad for the song Neverlight, from my album, Colours In The Dark. I soon became very involved in making my own productions sound perfect for my needs, so I was seeking the perfect team to work with. When I found out SLIPKNOT had been working with mixing engineer Colin Richardson for many years, as soon as I heard Psychosocial,
I had to call him and work with him to mix some of my songs.
“I’m a perfectionist and I’m still trying to make progress as a singer to this day, so DVOŘÁK’s Song To The Moon, from the opera Rusalka, has been a very difficult aria for me for many years. I dared to try it once a couple of years ago to see how hard it would be, but it wasn’t painful for me anymore and that made me realise I’m doing something good by working hard to make my lyrical singing technique better on a daily basis.”
TARJA’S LATEST ALBUM, IN THE RAW, IS OUT AUGUST 30 VIA EARMUSIC
“IT HURT TO LEAVE MY COUNTRY BEHIND”