The one thing that you can always expect to hear from a Tarja Turunen album is diversity. Since her departure from Nightwish the talented musician has delivered four solo albums. Her fifth album – In The Raw – will be released on August 30th and sees her explore both her metal and classical music sides in an album of brilliance. There are even duets with Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil and Bjorn Strid of Soilwork that are a must listen for the most devout metal fans.
“You are very right about that,” says Turunen when I suggest to her that the lyrics on this album are very personal. “This is the most personal so far in my career. That was probably the only way for me to go this time. There are several reasons for that, but I think the biggest reason was because at the end of last year I found myself pretty exhausted. I had been working in several productions simultaneously, there were a lot of things going on all the time – I was on the road… I am a mother, I wasn’t able to see my family as much as I wanted – there were a lot of things, a lot of personal things. So at the end of last year, about Christmas time, I was feeling really burnt out, it should be a good time to be around your family and I was just too tired and I knew at the start of the year that I had to start writing the lyrics and I was like ‘oh fuck I don’t know if I can make it.’”
“So I had all the doubts in the world around me when I started to write the lyrics,” she continues. “That is why everything is so personal because I was thinking this needs to come through me, from my heart, from my soul – everything that I do there has to be a reason for this and it was like that. When I finished writing the album I felt so damn good, I felt so good because it has never been like that for me, so deep, it was really beautiful.”
You can listen to our full interview with Tarja on Spotify.
