Tarja Turunen

I'm a workaholic. My listeners, I think, they know me as a workaholic already. But, you know, work is my love.

If I'm singing powerfully, I need something powerful behind me so that I don't feel like I am left alone.

I don't write duets - I write songs for my voice.

I love music, and that is what I care for, and that is what I deliver for people.

Music is emotion; it's a beautiful thing that connects people despite their age or differences or cultural differences and anything. We are still the same, and we can love the same things.

I wouldn't call myself at all as a crossover artist - I kind of hate that word - but in a way, you need to see me like that, because I'm working in classical music, I'm doing these other projects, and I'm having a rock career at the same time.

As I am a lyrical singer, I really have to work hard. I'm still really training on a daily basis on my vocals. Because of the lyrical training, it never really ends.

I love photography myself.

If you think of people, the majority of us, we can't do what we really love. I am really grateful that I can work with my dream.

You need to think and live your life. You only live once. That's how it is.

I write a song for myself because I need to come out with that particular song.

It's incredible how much beauty exists in the world of music and how many artists you can really inspire with your own work.

I've always enjoyed the respect from my male colleagues or my audiences all over the world. I've never suffered by the fact of being a woman on the road.

I've always been very respected as a female singer in metal, or in general as a female singer.

Music really makes you keep your feet on the ground. People can really see if you're honest. That is the truth, they really can see through you.

I think it's really important to be humble for the music because there is always someone better than you, there is always something new for you to learn for music and you can't be the best in the world. It makes you work very hard.

I love this freedom that has been given to me as an artist to express myself.

Myself, I would love to record and film every performance I make, as each concert is special and unique.

Actually, the whole thing of being a solo artist has been such a learning process for me. Since I departed from my previous band, NIGHTWISH, it was the whole beginning of my career, there was stuff in the air. I had to learn so much.

I could write songs on the beach, but the interior darkness, we have it all. We have it.

After all these years, being alone, creating your art and finding your way, finding the path I wanted to take, writing the songs, being more comfortable and confident in what I do, it's been actually an incredible joyride.

Producing a dark Christmas album in the middle of the summer is a very interesting process, especially if you are doing it by the turquoise Caribbean Sea.

I would be ready to rejoin Nightwish if all the members of the band and the management team were changed.

Johnny Andrews can make me fly with his ideas for new songs. It has always been a pure pleasure to write with him.

Gold, we think, is something polished and perfect, sophisticated, a luxury. But in its natural state, it's a raw element.

Paulo Coelho is a very important writer, and I have discovered a lot about myself through his texts.

My fans have been the power behind me and beside me, they have been holding me awake, and so they are my winter storm.

I think that when I am making music, if I can be really happy with it and get my message across, then that is the most important thing.

It really is very true that the more you do, the less you know. I try to keep myself very open-minded in that sense.

In the beginning of my career, I didn't have any female singer in metal to ask for advice, nor have I ever had a role model or a metal singer that could inspire me, because the way I sang was operatic.

I finished my university studies with classical music while being in a successful metal band, but that was not an easy task at all.

For me, it is incredible to hear singers in the metal scene telling me I had been their inspiration.

In the beginning of my career I had to deal with the fact that since I was the only woman in the band, the singer and the face of the band, I obviously got the most of the attention of the public everywhere I went.

The Brightest Void' gives more than a first taste of 'The Shadow Self;' it is a full album filled with nine songs!

I have very different kinds of songs - there are these film-music-type of songs, and then metal, metal, metal, ha-ha! These are different kinds of styles, so not every musician can play both types of music.

I wake up usually quite late, just in time for the lunch, especially if I sleep badly during the night.

With my classical training and coming from a metal band, producers didn't know what to expect. I like to shock people, though.

I do always the music before the lyrics. The story or an idea for the lyrics appears during the composing process normally, but some other times I already have a strong idea of the story I would like to sing before any music comes to my mind.

I mean, being a solo artist is very different than being a member of a band. It's absolutely different. The whole situation is very different - situations where you can't really compare, it's so very different. But I found happiness.

I'm happy, I'm healthy, I am not looking backwards - I'm only heading towards some kind of dreams of mine and living my dreams.

It is vital for me to make progress as a lyrical singer since it also helps me to sing rock better.

I was not a metal fan.

Since I was a little child, I always wanted to do music. That was my passion.

I was kind of, I would say, even obsessed with music. I wanted to start learning piano when I was six years old, and after that, my parents were very supportive and they took me to several kinds of music lessons. So music filled all my childhood.

When I'm doing something, I do it with my heart. And so if I feel good about something, I'm going for it; one hundred percent I'm on it.

For me, there are no borders in music in general.

I like to keep the big dynamic changes between my songs, so that album songs feel radically different from each other.

I was with Nightwish for such a long time that I still feel the band as a part of myself. I was one of the most important elements in Nightwish for nine years, and the band was an essential part of myself too.

I am sure that everyone will immediately discover how much 'The Brightest Void' and 'The Shadow Self' are entwined with each other but, at the same time, are two independent records which stand on their own.

I don't think I'd be healthy if I only were a heavy metal singer.