TARJA TURUNEN: 'Music Has Saved Me'

In a new interview with Heavy New York, former NIGHTWISH singer Tarja Turunen was asked if she ever thinks about the impact a song will have on the listener while she is working on new music. She responded (hear audio below): "Not necessarily I'm thinking about when I sit down to write a song how will be the impact of this song. The whole process of writing songs, or my lyrics, they are so personal nowadays that first place they have to mean so much to me, and then I hope, obviously, that they could mean something for another one. But I wouldn't go and even explain my lyrics for somebody. I kind of tend to write them openly so that they could really understand them the way they want. Because that is important. If I understand one certain song in my way, it's my own way and it's my way always and it's gonna always be my way. I don't want that to be stolen away from me.

"But it's amazing to see and hear the impact that music in general has, or art in general, in people," she continued. "Music has saved me. It was the situation when I was writing for my last album, actually. I was super tired. I felt, at the end of last year, that I cannot deliver anymore. Why on earth I have put myself on such deadline that I cannot complete. Then suddenly I find myself writing the lyrics. And when I finished the work, I felt like newborn in a way that I felt very strongly that music saved me again. So I believe all those people telling me that 'you helped so much.' And it's amazing. I feel that's why I'm here, that's why I'm loving music and that's why I'm [doing] what I'm doing."

Tarja's new live album "Christmas Together: Live At Olomouc And Hradec Králové 2019", was released on November 6 via earMUSIC. The LP was produced by Tarja, the American Emmy Award-winning film score composer Jim Dooley and British producer Tim Palmer, known for his work with PEARL JAM, U2, David Bowie and THE CURE, among others, who also mixed the album at '62 Studio in Texas. The album was mastered at Sterling Sound in New York.

Last year, Turunen dismissed Internet chatter about her possible return to NIGHTWISH after her December 2017 onstage reunion with the band's bassist/vocalist Marco Hietala during a "Raskasta Joulua" concert in Hämeenlinna, Finland.

"I know a lot of fans would love to see something happen, but it's a very long distance away," she told Kerrang! magazine. "Personally, I don't see anything happening with me and them, to be perfectly honest. Marco came a little later into the band; he wasn't there since the beginning. He was always a guy I was close to. Me and [NIGHTWISH keyboardist/leader] Tuomas Holopainen, however, haven't seen each other in a long time… but we have been in touch. It's not bad. The past is what it is; we can't change that. We can only change the future."

Turunen was fired from NIGHTWISH at the end of the band's 2005 tour by being presented with an open letter which was published on the NIGHTWISH web site at the same time. In the letter, the other members of NIGHTWISH wrote: "To you, unfortunately, business, money, and things that have nothing to do with emotions have become much more important."

Holopainen later called the decision to part ways with Turunen "the most difficult thing I ever had to do." For her part, Tarja said the way she was kicked out of the group proved that her former bandmates were not her friends. "Maybe one day I'll forgive, but I will never forget," she said.

Dutch singer Floor Jansen made her live debut as the frontwoman of NIGHTWISH in October 2012 at Showbox Sodo in Seattle, Washington following the abrupt departure of the band's lead singer of five years, Anette Olzon.

Tarja's latest studio album, "In The Raw", was released in August 2019 via earMUSIC.