NIGHTWISH Singer: 'All This Beautiful Music Is Lovely, But You Need To Be Naughty Sometimes'

NIGHTWISH's Anette Olzon is featured in the January 2008 issue of Metal Maniacs talking about her band's latest album, "Dark Passion Play". Excerpts follow:

On being a woman in metal:

"All this beautiful [music] is lovely, but you need to be naughty sometimes. I'm a nice girl, but I don't feel all the things I sing about are only from a male perspective. Everyone has sins and naughty thoughts. You just have to bring that out when you're onstage. When I sing 'She Is My Sin', I try to sing it from my perspective, even though it's about a girl."

On how she joined the band after the departure of vocalist Tarja Turunen:

"I think I was among the first 10 or 20 submissions. The sound engineer in my other band said, 'Have you heard? NIGHTWISH kicked out Tarja. You should apply.' I was like, 'No. Why should I?' He said, 'Well, you should hurry up, because I hear they already have someone.' This was like a week after everything happened. I rushed to the studio and asked a friend, did the song rapidly and sent it off. I only sent 'Ever Dream', a new version. We redid the background and guitars. It's my version. Maybe one week later, Tuomas [Holopainen] sent me an email that he really liked it, but it wasn't until September [2006] that I actually met them. They turned me down once, before that! I didn't know why. They didn't say, but I know now it's because I have a child. I was stubborn and during the summer, I sent them some more material, but I still had to wait until late January to know it was me."

On her input for "Dark Passion Play":

“Even if it's the same melody, the way I sing it is a little different in that I accentuated certain words. I really get into 'Eve'. On 'Sahara', at the end, where I had to do the 'ohs,' they just said, 'Do something.' There are lots of little things everywhere. When I sing a song, I never sing exactly how it's written. That's the difference between me and a classical singer. I don't sing by notes. I improvise and sing by hearing, so the interpretation is mine."

The January 2008 Metal Maniacs is on sale now.

Watch fan-filmed video footage of NIGHTWISH performing the song "Sahara" on December 2, 2007 at Sentrum Scene in Oslo, Norway.