Planet-Loud.com has posted a recent interview with TARJA TURUNEN (ex-NIGHTWISH) in which they discuss her musical upbringing, Nightwish and her new album Winter Storm. The following is an excerpt from the discussion:

Planet-Loud.com: I'm Going to try and avoid the usual Nightwish questions; I can imagine you get hundreds of interviews about it. You have a new album, Winter Storm, to be released very shortly which we are all looking forward to hearing, and we're looking forward to seeing more of you as a solo artist. You started singing from a very young age, were you family very supportive about your decision to sing?

Tarja: "I was always such a happy child as, being a young girl in a small village, I was always singing everywhere I went so they always knew I loved it. They sent me to piano lessons and were always pushing me to do the best I could and driving me to bigger cities four/five times a week to perform."

Planet-Loud.com: Were your parents musical at all?

Tarja: "We were always a musical family, but they were not professionally involved in music. My mother would play piano and we

would all sit round it singing so we were a very noisy family."

Planet Loud.com: You fell into Nightwish quite quickly, and signed after your first single in 1997. Was metal something you thought about before or saw yourself doing?

Tarja: "My brother played guitar and was very much into hard rock so I was aware of it. All my studies were in classical music and I decided I wanted to explore more and my teachers were always pushing me to discover something new. I was only at University for half a year before I joined Nightwish. We already knew each other and we took it as a challenge. We went to the studio very soon and it was a bit more different than my family expected but it was really something magical music wise."

Planet-Loud.com: It's great that you had the support form your teachers and family. You did a lot of tours with Nightwish, sometimes away for three months at a time. What's it like for a woman on the road with all male bands? Did you ever go groupie hunting?

Tarja: "Ha! No, no. I didn't go groupie hunting. I was the only girl at my school and I had older brothers so I was very used to just

spending time with men only but I did miss speaking to girls. My phone bills were huge after a tour as I was ringing all my girlie friends back home. I had to make sure I took real good care of myself on tour as it was so easy to get sick with travelling in and out of different climates and if one of the crew got sick we all did. So that was the difficult part not the men."

To read the interview in its entirety, head to this location.

My Winter Storm is out now via Universal Music. BW&BK; is exclusively presenting her entire new album - one day at a time! We will be previewing each track from My Winter Storm over the next 14 days. Just click on the link under Brave Tunes (left-hand-side of BraveWords.com) to hear today's track.

My Winter Storm tracklisting: 'Ite, Missa Est'/'I Walk Alone', 'Lost Northern Star', 'Seeking For The Reign'/'The Reign', 'The Escape Of The Doll'/'My Little Pheonix', 'Boy And The Ghost', 'Sing For Me', 'Oasis', 'Poison', 'Our Great Divide', 'Sunset'/'Damned And Divine', 'Minor Heaven', 'Ciaran's Swell', 'Calling Grace'.