E A G L E S C R Y // the one and only source for everything NIGHTWISH and TARJA TURUNEN //

translated by Miche

If you would make a typographical summary of Anette Olzon it could look like this: ;=). In the 9 emails that were sent before our meeting she used the smiley 14 times. She laughs when she tells us that she has a headache because of being awake all night, taking care of her baby. When we ask her to describe her character with one word she choose ”positive”. - ”I'm one of those ”hahaha, let's go!” kind of persons”, she says. - ”It can almost become too much for some people. I've always had a positive look on life. But then, of course, I've had not-so-good periods too, but then it's always been my thing, ”let's go!” I think that you live a better life if you're like that. I'm not just gonna sit down and do nothing. I don't believe in victims and ”negativism”. I believe in positive thoughts.”

She greets us in her apartment in central Helsingborg. On the door you can see the name Olsson – the Z-spelling is only being used in more ”official/public” circumstances. Her boyfriend Johan Husgafvel, bassist of Pain, is taking care of their baby Nemo in the bedroom. Her 9 year old son Seth is at school. The 39 year old rock star is completely anonymous in Swedish media, but she's also the vocalist in Finland's proudest export when it comes to music. Since she officially was announced as the new vocalist of Nightwish in May 2007 she has performed in 36 countries. - ”When I went to the P3 Gold Awards 2010 I said to my manager: ”Oh my god, it's so scary to be here among all those famous artists!” And he just replied: Hey, you are more famous than all of them.” If you take into account how many albums we've sold and the venues we're playing, I am bigger than them, but it was really scary. I was on the same stage as Mustasch, to me they were bigger. Robyn walked around there and I think she's amazing, but she's not really that big in other countries. It's weird. Maybe it's because I didn't know how huge Nightwish were when I joined.”

Four years ago this interview would have been unlikely to happen at all. Then it wouldn't have included anything about a large world tour, about a collapse in Brazil, or Finnish paparazzi sneaking around outside her house. If it would've happened, it would've been about a 35 year old, regular mother from Påarp. She could have told us about how it is to pursue a dream - about trying to succeed with the AOR band Alyson Avenue, about ”being” Agnetha Fältskog in an Abba cover band, but she wouldn't have been able to tell us about how it is to reach that dream. If someone would have mentioned Nightwish she wouldn't know much about what it was. - ”I knew about the name, people were talking about it.” When she found out in the spring of 2006 that Tarja had been fired, she listened to a compilation album where ”Ever Dream” was included. She recorded it and sent it to the keyboardist and the leader Tuomas Holopainen. - ”I expected already from the beginning that I would get the job, I felt that it was my destiny. When I got the first response, when Tuomas was very excited, I was sure that I would get it. With great self-confidence I felt that way. But then, when I got the ”no”, I was thinking ”this doesn't seem right..”, and I was very sad.” The reason for the ”no” was because Anette had children. - ”I understand why Tuomas was worried, but I was disappointed. I'm no ”huge” feminist, but of course I thought ”it's just because I'm a woman.” Two of the guys in the band already had children. Finland hasn't got as far as Sweden when it comes to gender equity. I've done quite a lot of gender studies, so I wondered why this would be a problem. But they've apologized and they're regretting that they were thinking like that.” A couple of weeks later she tried again. She didn't believe in being negative and take no for an answer. She sent Tuomas a DVD where she was performing and after that the band members wanted to meet her. - ”If I hadn't sent that DVD I would never have got the job. When I met them it just ”clicked”. I could tell straight away that they liked me and I liked them. Even if I'm Swedish and they're Finns, we all come from the ”woods”, from small villages. Not everyone would've been able to get along with some guys from Karelen. Not everyone can sit by a camp fire and sleep in an uncomfortable bed, without electricity, as I did. Drink and get a bit drunk together. A city girl maybe wouldn't be able to handle all of that.

Anette Olzon was born on the 21st of June 1971 in Katrineholm. When she was two years old her parents divorced. She went with her mother and her two older siblings to live in Åstorp, east of Helsingborg. Six years later they moved to Hyllinge, within the same municipality, where her mother still lives. She spent the holidays together with her father in Högsjö. On the train between the cities she changed her accent. - ”I used to make up that dad was sailing on the seven seas, it was unusual with divorces at the time. My life was quite the same as many children live today, I had a stepmother and a stepfather, but it was a difficult time, I was ashamed because my dad wasn't there. And I had no mother at home most of the time either, she was a singer and she was working in an office. She worked all week long and sung at gigs in the weekends. I was alone most of the time. A ”key child”. I always used to make pasta with various spices, that was ”my” food. I had sponge cake for lunch.”

(For this next part you should have a quick look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansband)

She grew up in a ”dansband”-environment. A lot of the people in her family are active members and her uncle Kenth Andersson was the bassist of Vikingarna (the Vikings) from 1988 to 2004. She has memories from her early childhood being backstage when her mother was performing. Later on she even could replace her mother when needed. - ”I got to see what it was like in the tour bus and how men can be like. They were very ”dirty”, I got to hear a lot of things that I shouldn't have heard. It was all about women here and there. One in every city. I think I got the impression that many in the business were like Billy Butt.” Then she felt anger about her mother's priorities. Today she's proud instead of angry. - ”She has always wanted to reach to where I am today. She was really close to being allowed to record an album when I was born. She just had to sign the contract. But she gave it up instead. Of course it's always been there somewhere in her mind, that she has that dream. My mother loves to sing. Now when I'm a parent myself I see that she did the best she could. God, you have to live too.”

When Anette was 16 years old she could've been able to become a professional musician. Candela wanted to enter the Swedish top charts and trade their front woman for a younger one. Before the question went on to Jenny Öhlund (today Jenny Silver and until recently married to the Hardcore Superstars ex-guitarist Thomas Silver), Anette was offered the job. The vocalist that was being fired was called Maivor Ohlsson, her mother. - ”They called me and said ”don't tell her anything, but we want to...”. In one way it was tempting, but I couldn't do that to her. I told her straight away what had happened and she was really upset. It was a very nasty thing to do. It would have been an easy way for me to become famous. At the same time I realised that if I was to do ”dansband” I would be marked for life. I was smart enough to not do that, and I have never regretted my choice.”

She jumped on a course in Economics at college, but quit after the first year. - ”After that I wanted to become a hairdresser, but my grades weren't good enough. I wasn't allowed to enter the music programme, because my brother was already attending and it was expensive. My mother didn't want to send another kid there. A pal of mine was going to try out the restaurant/cooking programme and become a waitress, so I came along and stayed for two years. After that I worked with that sort of stuff for quite a long time. It sucked.” The dream about the big avenues never took her further than to the band practices with Alyson Avenue in Åstorp. - ”They didn't want to become famous. It was the whole ”we just want to have fun, not sell out” attitude. In one way I wish that we can become famous together, because we kept together for almost 15 years. And now everyone's old and have families and stuff. And they're still going strong. It doesn't feel too great, that I've got the chance while they're still in the same place, but they're happy anyway.”

She worked at a telemarketing company, changed to animal-care, and wanted to become a vet until she was accepted at the Ballet Academy in Gothenburg. - ”It was huge. Amazing. I was so happy. To mum it was incredible that her daughter had been accepted there. Vocally, I was good, I was probably the best there, but there were mostly dance classes there. Ballet. I had tried jazz dance and stuff like that before, but I'm no dancer. I'm dancing on-stage and I look like a twat, but it doesn't look good at all.” Her self-esteem took a large hit by the teacher's critiques. ”They were saying that they wanted us to be extremely thin, ”smoke more, eat less.” Besides, I had a boyfriend back at home and I got homesick, so I just attended the academy for 8 or 9 months. It was a difficult decision because mum didn't want me to quit. But then I actually took help from Lisa Nilsson (famous Swedish musician and songwriter), who had also quit the academy because she ended up getting bulimia. I sent her a letter, but I never expected her to answer, but she responded and we started to send letters to each other. She wrote that you don't need an education to become a singer. It was really good and I still thank her today. How many people would do something like that? It was her who made me go against my mother's will.”

Then, at the age of 21, Anette Olzon stopped singing. It was the second time she gave up the thought of becoming a singer. ”I had just lost all interest for it. It was really hard, it wasn't fun at all.” The first time had been when she during a musical in Helsingborg ended up damaging her vocal cords. ”I wasn't allowed to sing for 6 months. That's a long time when you're not allowed to do what you love. The third time was when she became a mother in 2001. - ”Your voice can change when you have kids and my voice got darker. I had to lower the songs in Alyson Avenue, it was a huge disappointment, because I liked to use my high-pitched rock voice. Then it just felt like, ”oh well, now I can't do this any more, I will spend all my time working in an office from now on.”” At the same time she had even more troubling thoughts to handle, after a difficult labour. Partly the euphoria of being a parent, and partly the fear that was caused of the feeling of a near-death experience. ”I felt how I left my body and straight into the nurse. I saw myself lying there. It was very scary. I've been seeing a psychiatrist, because after a few days it was like a trauma, ”what was that? Was I close to dying?”I didn't feel well at all. I was so high because of the anaesthetic meds, so it's hard to tell what actually happened. When you're in so much pain, the soul can make an attempt to escape. I think it might've been like that, but it could also be because I had so many medicines in my body. In that moment it felt like, ”I'm gonna die now.” The worst thing afterwards was that people thought that it all was completely crazy, they just laughed. No one took it seriously. My grandmother (on her mother's side) almost died once, and she saw the light at the end too, and I guess no one laughed at her, but I think she felt the same thing.”

Because of this ”trial”, Anette is now more ”into” her beliefs. She's been raised in a spiritual context – her mother wasn't religious, but she gave them a ride to the church on Sundays. - ”I'm a Christian and I pray to God, now, if there is some dude in heaven I don't know, but it has helped me a lot. I'm not going to church, even if I like it there and my son will be baptised there. It's more about my own beliefs. It's something I've found and it comforts me. I believe in humans, I believe in us. I'm not ”fate blind”, I think that you can change your own life, but actually, something usually happens when I pray. My mother has taught me to pray to the Angels, to put small wishes in books and things like that. ”

In Nightwish she and Tuomas united in a diffuse belief in ”something”, while the bagpipes-guest Troy Donockley think it's just rubbish. - ”He's totally a scientific person. We always have funny discussions where he can judge everything and explain everything: ”they are only fooling you!”, oh well, maybe they are, but I still have my beliefs. No one has forced me into it. My son says that he believe in God too, but I've never told him that he has to.”

After the Ballet Academy she moved back home to Helsingborg. The music was there somewhere in the background. She worked in an office, and had a good income. She turned 30 and became a parent. ”I've known since I was little what I want to do in life, and that is to sing. When you don't get where you want to get you still have to live your life and then you have to work in other places. I have tried out so many different things but I've never felt that any of it has been my ”thing” in life. I've only been happy when I've been at home singing. Everyone said ”now you're going to be happy and feel fine, you're life is perfect now.” It was perfect, but it wasn't perfect when it came to the work-part of it. I felt that I had to try to pursue that dream one more time before I got too old.”

She went on auditions in Germany, she went to an audition for ”The New Theatre”'s (Denmark) version of the Phantom of the Opera. She visited big labels and received mixed feedback. ”They either wanted me to be in a band or write my own stuff, but I wasn't into that at the time. They also wanted know to what genres I was into. I've always been into so much music and I never really knew. I've been singing everything. I think it's important for the people that wants to become something big, to know what you want to sing. Robyn knows what she wants, Madonna knows what she wants.” She was close to being accepted into Channel 4:s reality show ”Friends on tour”, but she was turned down because she was living with her boyfriend. She registered herself on Stage Pool, she applied for Swedish Idol. ”I only ever went to the very first stage and I never even got to see the judges. The only thing I can think is that I was too old and maybe too ”done”. This was many years ago, back when it all started. I think I could've managed quite well on that show. I have a quite commercial voice and I've sung a lot of different genres. I wouldn't have been comfortable with them deciding things I should do, because I'm too old for that.”

She had just started her psychology studies and she was singing Abba at home when she applied for Nightwish. -”My ex-husband thought that I had to take a job. But I couldn't, because if I would get the chance in the band I would have to quit straight away. So I put my life on hold for Nightwish. If I hadn't got the chance I would've been very upset.” With a failed marriage and a 5 year old child she was accepted into the most successful band in Finland, just in time for their most ambitious international campaign so far. On the 24th of May 2007 Anette Olzon was announced as a new member and the day after that the new single was released. Journalists and photographers gathered up by her house in Påarp. In the articles there were directions for people who wanted to go there and a photo of her cat.

The 22nd of September the same year, a few days before the release of Dark Passion Play, she made her live debut. In Tallinn, on a secret gig, there were only supposed to be Estonians. ”All of Finland were at the gig. I yelled at the guys before we entered the stage, ”what the hell have you done?” and they just went ”woooops!”. They were as nervous as I was. There was definetely some sort of tension present, but I think it went well. I was pleased and quite relaxed. The first weeks I jumped up and down on stage and I was happy, because I didn't feel the pressure yet. Then I was just Anette that had been on stage my entire life and who think it's great. It was when people started to compare and criticize that my self-esteem took a quite big hit.” Tel Aviv (6th of October 2007) marked the start of a huge and intensive tour. The rest of the year they played on both sides of the Atlantic, continuing to Asia, Australia and Europe again in 2008. They finished that year in North and South America. In the Spring of 2009 they went back to Europe and the US. - ”It was completely foolish. I wasn't prepared mentally. I was completely naive, I am so positive, so there were no obstacles. But I can tell you that it wasn't nice to put that tour on my shoulders. It hadn't been nice to any vocalist, but I also had to live up to taking over after an icon. Tarja is an angel to many. I almost pushed myself to the limit. I went from no singing at all to singing 4-6 times a week. Even the boys had blisters on their fingers. They have also admitted that it was too much. We have said ”never again” and that's something that we stand for. We wouldn't be able to do another tour like that.” To choose positive thoughts became harder, even if her way of looking on things was shared by Tuomas. - ”He always go ”spirits up!”. No matter what happens you should look forward. It takes you a long way and you can survive many things by doing that. During some interviews we all just hate each other, but we still pretend to be best friends. At the same time we know that things like that don't last forever. When you live that closely together all the time you end up being a family. It's easy to end up in the ”whine zone” but it doesn't make things better.”

She tells us that she can't stand negative people at all. - ”I want everyone to be happy. I have ”broke up” with some friends because of that, negativism takes up much unnecessary energy. We live for such a short time and it's better to be positive. It's like when you have kids, when you're not allowed to sleep and when you wake up with a headache: ”Alright, on with that smile!””

On the 10th of November 2008 there were 9 gigs left to do in South America, before a three month long vacation. After more than 100 cities on five continents they had arrived at Belo Horizonte in the south-east of Brazil – a long way from home. One hour into the concert Anette was sitting on the edge of the stage to finish ”The Poet and the Pendulum”. The words couldn't have been placed better in a manuscript when she sung: ”Be still, my son, you're home.” She shook her head, looked up and tried to hold back the tears when she continued: ”When did you become so cold?” After that she left the stage, crying. - ”I was so incredibly homesick”, she explains. - ”I had kept my divorce secret. I didn't want the media to know about it. I would share a home and I my son was all of a sudden in the middle of all of it. There were plenty of things going on at that time. After that the boys have said: ”Oh my god you've felt so fucking crap and we never noticed?”. I don't think they wanted to notice it, because everyone was busy with their own problems. Many of us were feeling crap, but I'm the one who couldn't take it any more.” The concert went on for another song without Anette Olzon. The bassist Marco Hietala told the audience that the vocalist wasn't in the mood for ”this kind of heavy shit right now”, that she had ”pretty intense trouble”. It was a summary of both her private troubles, and the smoke machine (placed right in her face) that was troubling her during the gig, and last but not least the Tarja fans in the front row who gave her the finger. - ”I was really, really stressed. It was just too much to handle. I was completely exhausted. My self-esteem was very low and we were fighting a lot with each other. We were so tired of each other. And also, the fans in South America are special, they can be amazing, but I was really scared. Many people threatened to kill me. Many unpleasant things came in my way. I'm sure it wouldn't have affected me if I was strong at the time, but I wasn't.” Backstage, the moments after the ”collapse”, the decision came to her. - ”I was thinking, ”what the hell did I just do?” I was embarrassed: ”I couldn't take it, I just collapsed.” And the guys were really pissed, of course. Everyone was in a terrible mood, and I was thinking: ”I'm going home now, this is it. I can just quit now.”

I think that the others were really worried that I wouldn't be able to do it any more. They didn't understand what had happened. They had thought that I was the strong person in the whole world.” Anette have described earlier how she in the beginning always was so ”independent and tough” that no one dared to try to help her. ”I'm damn proud and stubborn”, she explains. “It's really difficult for me to ask for help. Mum has told me at least a 1000 times that I have to do it, but I still carry all my bags myself. That's who I am. That's the problem when you're going to be a happy person all the time, that when you fall, you fall hard. I at least tried to explain what I was going through, but maybe I wasn't clear enough. They were also not used to having someone there that talked like that. Everyone just went to their own rooms and didn't feel too good at all.”

She handled the whole missing-her-son situation by just ignoring those feelings. “- I didn't call home as much as I used to do because I didn't want to hear his voice. I noticed that two weeks is what I can handle, then it becomes very tough. Marco is the same. We've sat and cried together many times. He's older than me, maybe that's got something to do with it. You become more frail with time. I had some serious kidney problems the whole tour and I had injections in my legs just so that I could stand on-stage, but the guys told me that you should pretend that you're not ill or tired. I'm not the kind of person who whines. This is my job.” During the worst period she chose to hire a manager. A bit awkward move, because of the band's history with Tarja's manager. - “I needed someone who was there for me. The guys are a very tight group and it was hard for me to get a place there. I also needed help with some other things than the others. They didn't really understand it. We weren't on the same level. When everything fell apart I needed to get some sort of perspective, at the same time I felt that my name had to be taken care of. If I was to quit I would still have to be able to my thing.”

After the vacation things went better. - “Until that night in Brazil I was doing everything for others sake. I had to be so good and prove, prove, prove, prove, prove and I just couldn't do it any more. After that I thought “I'll just ignore the fans and I'll just ignore if I sing like crap. Now I'm gonna go up on this stage for my OWN sake.” And I had plenty of fun during the last round. I was very relaxed and I didn't have anything more to prove. I had my collapse and I had shown that I wasn't that strong. “

She haven't seen the Youtube clips from the incident (“I just can't do it, it was very embarrassing”), but she's heard the comments. - “Oh, cry baby!” I've read so many horrible things. But they're allowed to think like that I guess. Yeah, I am a human and yes, it just became too much. My voice disappeared and I panicked. It sucked for me. Those clips will always be online. But I don't even want to think about it, because it was needed. I think the guys are thankful that I had my collapse, because then we had to think about what we were actually doing. “Hey, we have to think about each other!” We are very different individuals though, you should know that. I'm a girl. And I'm there in their faces, all the time.”

Unlike Tarja, Anette is in the same tour bus as the guys. “When I first joined the band they never talked about their problems. I think it's some sort of manly thing. And Finnish, maybe. I was like this: “Now we're going to have a meeting! Now we're going to talk!” I'm a sensitive person, I can start crying and things like that. A woman on the bus, they had never had it like that before. It's a huge thing. They used to just sit there and played whatever game they wanted, and then I came along and went “I have PMS today!” When a woman is there you have to think about what you say and you can't just fart whenever you want!”

Her toughness, which she prefer to call her “shell”, was built up she started high school and was being bullied. - “There was this one girl that didn't like me and the others followed her. I wasn't beat up or anything like that, but no one was talking to me. The guys have always been there by my side, but girls has always been a problem for me. I've always been this happy, positive girl and it's always been easy for me to hook up with guys. If someone turns against you in that age you start analysing why and you think that you might think that you have to change. But the more you change, the worse it gets. I went home and cried and I was very upset and sad. - “When I started to work as an adult, and if I saw some girls whispering about something, I just assumed that they were whispering about me, then I created a problem that never existed. It took me quite a while to realise that not everything is about me.”

She describe her self-confidence as “so-so”, both as a person and as a vocalist. - “I come from a background where you don't really tell each other encouraging stuff. My mother has always known that I have a great voice and she's always tried to push me forward. She never tells me how good I am. When she saw our concert in Copenhagen she never went “wow, you're on a huge stage!” It was more “I think the drums were too loud and the Islander, was it really supposed to sound like that?” That's what my family is like, you can never get too cocky. I think it's because most of them are musicians themselves, and while they're only playing in very small bands, they are all very skilled.” Just like her mother Anette has been a parent that's been aiming for that breakthrough. Just like her mother she continuously leave the house to perform. When her son has said “I hate you”, she has understood that, because she told her mum the same thing when she was a kid. - “I've felt really bad about it, “damn, now I'm doing the same thing as my mother did!” But if he ever tells me that I can't go, then I won't. When he's 18 he might think that I've been a bad mother. I'm ready for that, but at the same time, I'm doing this for both of us, if I had stayed home I wouldn't have been a good mother either. And I'm not doing exactly what my mother did, when I'm at home I help with the homework, and I cook food, and I'm being a mother. My mother was gone seven days a week, all the time.”

“I also know that my son is proud. He's so popular because of this! The only thing he wants is to be in the newspapers, but I've told him that he can do that when he's accomplished something himself. On Metaltown 2008, when Seth just had turned 7, he got to be on-stage and thank the audience. I had to give him that happiness, he was very very exited! After that he wanted to be on-stage every time, but it was difficult, because I had protected him and I knew that his face would be on the internet now. Of course I want to show off my kids, I love to talk about them, but I'm a little bit afraid. I'm not Michael Jackson and I don't have to be afraid in that way, but I'm being careful. Maybe I shouldn't be, if I were totally open about things, maybe it wouldn't be as exciting.”

Anette Olzon is very careful about what she's sharing about her personal life, but it's often quite hard to decide where to draw the line. She can blog about how it was to give birth, but on the other hand she earlier wanted to keep her kids' names secret. To an outsider it can seem more personal to talk about the whole giving birth experience, rather than just every day conversation fillers, but then again the outsider has never been in her situation.

“When I wrote on my blog that my son went to a disco and had been dancing a lot someone commented: “No, you're lying, I'm sure he just sat there, being gay and didn't get to dance with anyone.”, I wish that someone could tell me what the best thing to do is, because I really don't know. I've never been a public person before. The guys are more open, but they've paid for it too. Tuomas has been in some serious trouble, there's been death threats aimed towards both him and his mother. Fangirls that has reacted strongly towards him whenever he had a girlfriend. Helicopters have been circulating around his house, taking pictures.”

One of the reasons for moving away from Påarp was because one of her neighbours become a bit of a stalker. - “She could walk past the house 3-4 times a day and take pictures. It was a young woman, maybe 20 years old, so I'm not saying that she was dangerous. I'm sure it was just for personal use but it was annoying. But when something like that Seth just go: “Today she was here again and there was another one over there, and can you write three autographs for some of my friends in 5th grade?””

If 16 year old Anette had said yes to Candela she would've become famous at a time when every hate mail had a stamp attached to it, when all the gossip was spread on paper. When she 20 years later became a rock star it was during a time when public persons only is a click away from a storm of hate. - “It's a part of it all, you're supposed to be hated by some, and you're just supposed to be able to take it. You shouldn't even think it's a problem. I become really upset when people write something bad about me; “God, how fat she looked today..” I look horrible on photos, to see yourself looking like a “blob” and at the same time hear someone say that, it's not fun. As a girl, you know. I just don't understand how people can do it. It must be horrible to be a kid today. My son isn't allowed to use the internet at my place, but he can at his dad's.”

The first months in Nightwish she looked up things about herself. - “I suffered so badly that I had to stop. Sometimes I can do it out of curiosity, because now I can laugh at it too. You have no idea about what weird accusations I've received since I got pregnant! Someone wrote that I should stop lying, because I couldn't be pregnant. My belly wasn't as far up as it should've been and it was too small. “You have to put up a sonogram to prove that it's true!” Me and Johan just sit here and laugh sometimes. Why should I have to prove that I'm pregnant? What sort of weird people are they?” With the same vulgar touch to it, the rumour spread that the collapse on-stage was caused my a miscarriage. - “I wonder why they made that up? Because I'm a woman? There are always speculations and people wants to know plenty of things, but if you open up too much you're judged for that too. I get to hear that a lot, that you have to be in a specific way if you're going to be the vocalist of Nightwish. When I turned blonde, that wasn't good. When I wore a pink dress, that wasn't good. I've never been into the metal business before, so to me that was just “oh my god!”

On her blog you can read about an ordinary life. When she in August 2010 published a cropped photo of her baby, where you could see his hands and one of his ears, it was published in Finnish media right away. - “I always have to think about what I'm doing. It sucks. I only really wrote that the labour took a long time, but if I hadn't been the vocalist of Nightwish, I would have wrote about all of it. I love to write, and I have a dream that I one day can become a writer, but that's not a position I'm in right now. If there wasn't so much hatred I would've been more open.”

Anette isn't only unique in the same way as, for example, Tim Ripper Owens in Judas Priest (who also went from small gigs to arenas in one night), but she made it, unlike him, in a group that she had no relations to whatsoever before, in a genre she never had been into before. - “I understood that they were big and that they had released many albums, that they were popular among some people and that they were touring worldwide, but I didn't know that they were heroes back home in Finland. In a way I'm thankful for that. What if I had looked up to them? It wouldn't have worked out. When she started to explore Nightwish she was attracted by the symphonic, orchestral and bombastic sound. She didn't really paid any attention to how meaningful Tarja Turunen had been for the band. - “I noticed it when people ranted about it in every interview. It became more when “Eva” was released, and even more when we started touring. I realised that many fans were disappointed. As I've understood it, and I might be wrong here, Nightwish was almost the first band in this genre. Tarja had a very special voice that everyone instantly recognized.” She's speaking very diplomatic - “some people think that Nightwish is better with me, some think it was better with Tarja. “ I really like her a lot, I have her CDs and I wish her all luck and happiness. But it's been over me all the time, because I've been afraid that they would kick me out too: “Oh, today I didn't sing well at all, now they will fire me.” Who wouldn't feel like that? But they've always said that I don't have to worry about that.”

“Dark Passion Play” reached 4th place in the Swedish top charts and it has sold gold. But while “Amaranth” turned into the number one single in Finland, Hungary and Spain, it stayed in place 13 in Sweden. The publicity in Finland has continued to be way bigger than in the vocalist's own country. - “I was disappointed when nothing much happened in media here. I thought that I would get to hear myself more often. One time I heard “Amaranth” at “Lindex”. It was really weird, I have to say that. Sweden has somehow not accepted Nightwish. Many have heard the name, but we are too tough for commercial radio. We don't play here as much as we do in other places. It's not in the big arenas either. I think the guys wonder too why we haven't become bigger here.”

She has suggested to change from Nuclear Blast to something bigger. - “The guys really believe that you should be on a label that doesn't only want to exploit. It's the whole integrity thing, you shouldn't sell out. That's the idea many musicians have. And Nuclear Blast have been great, it's a good feeling to be the biggest band that they put the most effort into. I just mean that it's sad that we're not playing more in Sweden, I mean, why is it like that? Of course I want to be a prophet in my own hometown. The others are famous in their own country and I would be really happy if I could get more famous here too.”

In the national papers “Dark Passion Play” received a quite cold welcome: two out of six in Svenska Dagbladet, three out of five in Expressen. Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter didn't even made any reviews. Although, Aftonbladet gave it 3 out of 5 later on. - “Of course you become a bit upset if you get a bad review, we've got a couple of those, but I stay quite calm. Of course I wanted Aftonbladet to write good stuff about us. I don't remember what they though of the album, but after the gig at Metaltown we received a quite good review and I was very proud that they wrote good stuff about me then. Such a huge newspaper. It's quite difficult to get positive feedback I think, it's only really In Flames who get a lot of positive feedback in this genre. Plus I'm a woman. When I was with Alyson Avenue there were always rock and metal guys who thought that “female fronted” sucked.”

Making money was never one of the reasons to why she joined Nightwish – she has always earned quite a lot of money and she spend between 1000 – 5000 euros on clothes every month. - “I've had a quite high position in an office and I've never been poor as such. With the music it's like that one day you make money, the other day you're not. We don't have a Lady Gaga status, so you still have to be careful with the money.”

“ Now I've fulfilled my dream. If it would end now, I would still be happy. If I hadn't got to experience this I would still feel like I was missing something in my life. I would've longed for it until the day I die. I would surely look on “Idol” and I would have been thinking: “Oh, that could have been me.”

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