Tarja: “I’ve learned that you need to follow your heart as that’s all that matters at the end of the day.”

Across her solo career, Tarja has continued to expand the sound that first introduced her to audiences worldwide, combining heavy music with orchestral arrangements, cinematic production and increasingly personal songwriting. While each release has explored different spaces sonically, her latest album, Frisson Noire, arrives being described as the heaviest record of her solo career.

For Tarja, though, the record isn’t about revisiting the past. Instead, Frisson Noire reflects where she is creatively now. More confident in her songwriting, more trusting of instinct and less interested in following traditional structures or expectations. Produced alongside her longtime team and featuring contributions from collaborators including Dani Filth, the album also sees Tarja working with mixer Neil Avron to capture more of the scale and power she feels a heavy album deservees.

Speaking with V13 for our latest Cover Story, Tarja discusses the making of Frisson Noire, her approach to songwriting and production, and the freedom she’s found in creating music on her own terms. She also reflects on her early years growing up in rural Finland, discovering classical singing, bringing orchestral and heavy music together, and why emotional connection remains at the centre of everything she creates.

Your new record, Frisson Noire, has been described as the heaviest record of your career. Going back to Nightwish and everything you’ve gone through since then and where your career’s taken you, do you feel like this album has creatively taken you back to your beginnings or your roots?

“I don’t even know. Album after album I’ve noticed I’ve gained more confidence, especially when it comes to songwriting, confidence in myself as an artist and understanding what my voice is and what I want to do. It’s been a journey. But I wouldn’t say I’ve gone back to my roots. Actually, I feel quite far from those roots, even though we’re talking about metal. I feel like I’m somewhere completely different now, and that’s a very good feeling because nobody has really been directing me during these years. I’ve always paved my own way and that’s been challenging, but it’s been a good journey.”

What have you learned from that journey?

“I’ve learned that I shouldn’t give a shit about what others think. You need to follow your heart as that’s all that matters at the end of the day. When you’re happy with yourself and happy with your creations, because the creative process is always suffering and tears and self-doubt no matter what, once you come through that and complete something, if you are happy with your work then in a way it doesn’t matter anymore what the outcome is. It sounds horrible to say, but it’s become a kind of stress-free discovery. It’s taken a long time to really get there.”

“I’ve learned that I shouldn’t give a shit about what others think. You need to follow your heart as that’s all that matters at the end of the day.”

You’ve talked about self-doubt and belief. As a solo artist, how do you manage self-doubt and belief when you’re writing and working?

“I studied music for many years in two universities and I learned a certain way of creating music. I was taught that there was a correct way to do things, so it’s been really hard for me to get away from that box of how music should be done. But little by little I’ve gotten rid of those voices in the back of my mind. It was hard to allow myself to think, “Okay, I can change the tempo here, I can change the key there, I don’t need to structure it A-B-A-B, it can become more progressive.”

That’s what I really like in my songwriting today. I don’t care anymore. I don’t watch the clock. I don’t think, “I’m passing the three-minute mark, I need to stop.” But it’s taken time and courage to trust my instincts and feelings. The feelings are what matter. When it comes to music, I have to have the right feeling. I don’t necessarily sit down and decide to write songs. I write with my piano and I also work in my home studio laying down demos. But it’s really the feeling that drives me. I don’t analyse things as much anymore if the feeling is right.”

What was your introduction to music? Where did classical music and heavy music come into your life, and where did they cross over and become one?

“They became one a long time ago already. I was bullied in school. I was born in a tiny village in Finland in the middle of the forest and we didn’t even have neighbours. Music became the thing I felt very strongly about. I felt there was something good there, that I was good at it, and the other kids hated me for it. I was the only girl in the class too, so it wasn’t easy. School was tough for many years, but music was there to help me. My parents saw the talent in me. I have two brothers and they’re both very talented in music, and both my parents were musical too, but nobody in my family worked professionally in music.

I was the first one who really said, “I want to learn piano.” I was six years old and asked my parents to find me a teacher. It wasn’t easy because of where we lived, but they did. They always supported my passion, and I really respect that because their generation couldn’t live their dreams. They weren’t allowed to. But they gave me and my brothers the chance to live ours. Music was a dream for me. I felt very strongly as a child that I wanted to become a musician and a singer because I was singing at every local event. I was the girl in the village who sang.

V13 Cover Story – Issue 126 – Tarja

Then when I was around 14 or 15, I started having problems with my voice. It began cracking and I got terrified because I didn’t know how to use it properly. I searched for a vocal coach and the only teacher I found nearby was a classical singing teacher. I started lessons with her at 15 and my voice changed radically. I fell in love with it because it felt like an adventure into my own body and discovering what the voice could do. It was so different from ordinary singing and I thought, what is this? You can create this kind of sound with your body. It was exciting and I wanted to know everything about it.

It was also the time I left home. I started studying with that teacher in my village and then moved away for high school in another city in Finland. I was very young. I continued classical singing studies there because it was an arts high school dedicated to music. I was completely focused on music and I wanted to become an opera singer. That was the dream.

Then things shifted quite radically. I was in my first year at music university in Finland and Tuomas from Nightwish came to say hello. We already knew each other as his mother had even been my piano teacher at one point. We’d been involved in some of the same music projects growing up and he’s one year older than me. He said he had a demo and asked if I would sing on it. At the time, the music was acoustic guitars and keyboards, very peaceful and angelic. I said yes and went into the studio during Christmas break. By then I already had this huge voice, which surprised the guys because they remembered me as the village girl with the soft voice. Suddenly they were like, “What is she doing?”

The guys had the metal background but I had nothing to do with metal. I had the Black Album by Metallica in my collection and I knew melodic rock, but I wasn’t a metal fan. That’s when the idea was born to combine my voice with heavy music. We worked on a second demo and that became our first album.

I kept studying at university and even moved to Germany to continue my classical vocal training. That dedication actually saved me because back in the late ’90s we didn’t have in-ear systems. We played with massive stage volume and I couldn’t hear anything when I was singing. But my technique saved me. It’s saved me ever since. The better I became at classical singing, the better I became at singing rock. But it took a long time to learn how to project my operatic voice for heavy metal.”

From that point you’ve obviously been on a huge journey throughout your career and gone down a lot of different avenues. Why did now feel like the right moment to move into this kind of space musically?

“I’ve been releasing metal albums already, but maybe the biggest difference with this one is the sound of the album. I really wanted to capture something because my live band has always sounded very heavy. When I perform live, it sounds powerful as I have two guitar players, bass, drums, keyboards and I love that support and that push I get from the band on stage. I felt like I’d been missing some of that heaviness in my studio albums. I’ve produced my own records since my second solo album and it’s sometimes been a struggle trying to work out how to make them sound as heavy as I wanted.

I discussed it with my label and thought maybe I should try bringing in a producer to help. We tried a couple of times but it never felt right. Eventually I said, “Let me work with Neil Avron.” I’m a huge fan of his work as a mixing engineer in Los Angeles. I own many records he’s worked on and love the sound he creates. That’s the biggest difference with this album and why people are saying it’s the heaviest. It’s because of the sound we achieved.”

What did you learn about yourself making this record?

“Every album is a learning experience. What’s unfortunate now is that those days of everybody being in the same room recording together have mostly disappeared. I loved those times when we’d be in residential studios, arranging together and recording side by side. Nowadays everybody works remotely from home studios and, honestly, it’s a bit of a shame. I work together with my husband and we produce the records together, so we have to keep the train moving. It’s not always easy with time differences and everything else, but technology makes it possible. When it came to recording my vocals for this album, though, I felt incredibly free. That was the beautiful thing about this process. It felt almost stress-free.”

Tarja Turunen ‘Frisson Noire’ Album Artwork

The record feels very cinematic. There’s a lot of drama and atmosphere in it. What’s your writing process? Do you write the orchestral and cinematic elements separately, or do you almost hear a final result in your head?

“Very much so. Things are already happening in my head while I’m writing. Usually it starts with something incredibly simple, often just piano, but, even then, I can already hear where the orchestra comes in, where the heavy riff should hit, where things should open up. Then I work with my musicians on arrangements. For the orchestra I work with Jim Dooley in Los Angeles. He’s been with me since my first record and we’ve also done Christmas projects together. His work is absolutely cinematic and I trust him completely. He mainly works in film music, and with him it’s amazing. I can send him a track and only give him a few words about the feeling I want and he immediately understands what should happen. I don’t write the orchestral arrangements myself, but we communicate constantly and exchange ideas. If I hear something specific, a choir line or a movement, I’ll suggest it, but he develops it. It’s worked fantastically.”

That must be incredibly rewarding having somebody who can understand and translate what’s already in your head?

“It’s incredible. The same goes for my guitar players. Alex Scholpp in Germany has been with me since the beginning of my solo career and Julian Barrett in Argentina has worked with me for years too. It becomes really easy because they know me so well. I can sit there and say, “No, the riff should feel like this,” and hum ideas because I don’t play guitar myself. We experiment together. When something works, we both feel it immediately. That’s a gift. It’s not easy to find people like that and I’m very aware of how lucky I’ve been.”

On this record you’ve worked with a number of collaborators. What’s your approach to choosing who you work with? I’m thinking of people like Dani Filth?

“Funny enough, Dani and I had never actually met before this although we’d crossed paths at festivals. At first, while writing this album, I genuinely thought there wouldn’t be any collaborations at all except Marco, because I’d already written a song specifically for him. Leap of Faith was written with him in mind from the beginning. But with Dani, it happened completely differently. I was testing lyrics in the studio, I always sing them through before recording because if they don’t feel right, I can’t continue.

When I was working on ‘I Don’t Care’, I suddenly felt like I wasn’t enough for the song on my own. It became such a statement song and I thought Dani would be the perfect contrast to my clean voice. So I just sent him a message. Five minutes later he replied, “Abso-fucking-lutely, I’ll do it.” And he did. We eventually met while filming the video in Hamburg and it was fantastic getting to know him.”

Do you think he’s somebody you’d work with again?

“I really hope so.”

What about other collaborators? Is there anybody still on your bucketlist?

“That’s such a difficult question because there are so many brilliant musicians out there. But I’ve already been incredibly lucky. I’ve worked with opera singers, instrumentalists, heavy metal bands, pop artists because my work covers so many different areas. I even did an electronic album with different guitar players. I’ve worked with amazing people and I feel very grateful for that.”

Could you explain the meaning behind the title? It feels like a very cinematic and emotional title. What does it mean and what does it mean to you?

“Everything sounds nicer in French, right? Frisson Noire. I don’t speak French myself, but it sounds beautiful. Frisson means goosebumps but I definitely didn’t want to call my album Goosebumps. But that feeling of frisson has been part of my life ever since I was a child. I’ve always reacted very strongly emotionally whether it’s music that makes me cry, a piece of art, a story someone tells me. I get goosebumps easily. I’m a very sensitive person and that feeling is also very present when I write music.

When I complete a song and feel that it’s truly working, that moment gives me frisson. I need to feel things deeply. The same goes for lyrics, I can’t stay on the surface emotionally. I always dig deeper, and honestly the lyrics are where I suffer most in the creative process. But frisson has always been part of my life. As a performer I’m emotional too, and seeing audiences connect emotionally in my shows is one of the greatest gifts I can receive.”

“For me, strangely enough, the goosebumps often come with the orchestra. It’s easier for me to feel those moments when the orchestra lifts me and carries me somewhere emotionally.”

Recording this album, was there one particular moment where you felt the goosebumps?

“For me, strangely enough, the goosebumps often come with the orchestra. It’s easier for me to feel those moments when the orchestra lifts me and carries me somewhere emotionally. One moment that really gave me that feeling was hearing Jim’s orchestral arrangement for ‘At SeaWhen you finally listened to the finished album, what was that moment like?

“You have no idea how many times I have to listen to an album before it reaches that point. During mixing and mastering you’re constantly asking yourself if this is really the final version, is this correct, is this perfect, is this the last change? When it’s finally done, it’s overwhelming but also exhausting. It’s almost like giving birth. You think, “Okay, that’s it… and now what? How am I ever going to write another song?” I still haven’t fully dared to move on creatively yet. I’ve started trying to write some Christmas songs because I have ideas for another Christmas record one day, but I’m still living inside Frisson Noire. It took a lot out of me.”

Where do you see yourself going next?

“We’re always thinking about what comes next, but I don’t want to move too far away from what I already do — I have my limits too. One thing I really want to focus on is my singing. I still want to develop as a classical singer. One of my dreams is to create a proper classical album one day. I’ve only done one in my career, Ave Maria, and I’d love to return to that world. But that requires time, and honestly time is my enemy. As a songwriter too, I’d still like to spread my wings further, but again — that takes time.”

After a career that’s constantly evolved and reinvented itself, what still excites you most about creating music?

“It’s really the music itself. More than anything, I’ve gained confidence in myself through the process. It’s taken me a very long time to forgive myself for mistakes because I’m a perfectionist and I’ve always been hard on myself. Music has always been there to relieve me of those doubts. It’s therapy. Finishing a song and feeling that satisfaction — there’s nothing like it. But I’m also absolutely a performer. I live for concerts. I love studio work too, but nothing compares to the energy and love I get from audiences. I breathe for that feeling. I honestly think I’d become a miserable person if I couldn’t perform. Live shows are essential to who I am.”