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It’s more than two decades since Tarja Turunen was dramatically kicked out of Finnish metal giants Nightwish. Undeterred, she forged an impressive – and diverse – solo career incorporating her love for classical music, Christmas songs, folk and even electronic experimentation across 10 albums. Her latest, Frisson Noir, sees her return to the symphonic metal sound she helped turn into a global movement.

The first music I remember hearing

My parents had beautiful singing voices, and my brother is seven years older and used to play drums and some guitar at home, so there was always music around. But the first thing I really remember was Bonnie Tyler. I really paid attention to her because she was so different from everything else. I was about six years old and had just started playing piano, but hearing Bonnie Tyler’s voice on Total Eclipse Of The Heart had me singing along.

The first song I performed live

As a kid I’d perform at every little party there was in my village. I performed as a piano player and did Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I remember being terrified going up to play that.

The music that terrified me

I’m not a dark person, but I’m aware there is a darkness within me that I create from. As a kid I was the youngest singer in the opera. When the men were singing Wagner’s Tannhauser, there’s a scene for the male choir only and it’s super-dark and bombastic. Metal came to my life later on and brought me a beautiful darkness that reminds me of that.

The best song ever

The best song ever written is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, from A Night At The Opera. There are other songs – great songs – on that album, but that one takes your attention. That song is amazing because it takes you in.

The guitar hero

I’ve been very lucky to work with amazing guitar players. Joe Satriani’s sound is very particular and he’s amazing. I’ve seen him live a few times. I remember being in LA many years ago working on my third album [What Lies Beneath], and I was looking for a solo. Doug [Wimbish], my bassist, suggested getting Joe, and I was like: “Come on, he’s not going to want to play on my record.” But he called him up, and he did Falling Awake in a matter of two days.

The singer

Whitney Houston is, for me, the voice. After Bonnie, I discovered Whitney, and my teacher at school insisted I do things like Greatest Love Of All. I could never do it! Her voice was insanely gorgeous and powerful. I’ve got all her albums, live recordings, everything. The album Whitney is incredible. What an emotional voice.

The songwriter

I’d probably pick a composer. Hans Zimmer has written songs too, but he’s more of a film composer. His music has been a huge inspiration for me for many years. I even ended up working in his studio on my first album because I loved the score to Gladiator. That’s still one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. I couldn’t move because I was crying so much in the theatre, all because of the music!

The best record I made

The new one. No, really! I’ve never said that out loud. To be honest with you, I can say that Frisson Noir is my best record. My last album was seven years ago, but I’ve kept myself very busy with live shows, and covid all between. With this album, it represents who I am and where I am at this moment. It’s very personal to me and I’m proud of it.

The worst record I’ve made

Nightwish’s ‘first record’, Angels Fall First, was actually just our second demo. It takes a lot of courage to listen to it; I sound like I had a potato in my mouth! At that time I was studying in the music university and had started taking professional opera training. So I go into the studio for this, and it all took different takes and a completely different voice. I just couldn’t do it at the time. It wasn’t until the last couple of years in Nightwish I actually felt comfortable with my singing. There was nobody out there to teach me. But it did go gold, I suppose.

The most underrated band ever

I lived in Argentina for almost ten years. I discovered a lot of great local artists who were huge in their country, but totally unknown abroad. I love Alejandro Lerner. His melodies were just beautiful.

The song that makes me cry

My daughter is thirteen years old, and she showed me this band Falling In Reverse, who I knew existed but had never heard. They did an acoustic version of the [Papa Roach] song Last Resort, and I was driving when I heard it for the first time, and I just started crying. The singer’s interpretation of this in-your-face message about how everybody is afraid of something had a huge impact. It really affected me.

The song I want played at my funeral

If there’s going to be a funeral, I want it to be ABBA. Seriously, that’s my guilty pleasure, ABBA. On the tour bus, after a couple of glasses of wine, I’ll be blasting it out with my dudes. I went to see the ABBA Voyage twice in London, crying and singing along.

Frisson Noir is out now via earMUSIC.

1969 was a monumental year for Creedence Clearwater Revival. The band had already scored two platinum-selling albums and a trio of massive hits – Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising and Green River – by the time Fortunate Son was released in September. However, unlike most of their repertoire, which tended to fetishise the rural American South, Fortunate Son was a burning commentary on class and elitism, delivered against the sulphurous backdrop of the Vietnam War.

“I was mad at the spectre of the ordinary kid who had to serve in an army in a war that he was very much against,” explained CCR songwriter and frontman John Fogerty. “Yet the sons of the well-to-do and powerful didn’t have to worry about those things.”

The frontman barks out the verses with a vigour born of contempt: ‘Some folks inherit stars-pangled eyes/They send you down to war, Lord/And when you ask them, ‘How much should we give?’/They only answer, ‘More! More! More!’’

Fogerty had a specific person in mind when he wrote the song: David Eisenhower, grandson of former US President Dwight D Eisenhower. In late 1968, the younger Eisenhower had married Julie Nixon, daughter of President-elect Richard Nixon, in a lavish ceremony in New York. Fogerty saw their union as a metaphor for the social and political divisions of the countercultural era.

“You’d hear about the son of this senator or that congressman who was given a deferment from the military or a choice position in the military,” he wrote in his 2015 memoir, Fortunate Son. “They seemed privileged, and whether they liked it or not, these people were symbolic in the sense that they weren’t being touched by what their parents were doing. They weren’t being affected like the rest of us.”

“I went into the bedroom, sat on the edge of my bed with a yellow legal tablet and my felt-tipped pen. Out came the song. ‘It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son.’ I was screaming inside, very intense, but not saying a word. Out it came, onto three sheets of legal paper.”

The song is all the more powerful for its sheer simplicity. Lasting less than two-and-a-half minutes, Fortunate Son opens with a two-note guitar twang and hurtles along with only a short pause for air.

The wracked intensity of Fogerty’s voice, already shot from recording Down On The Corner earlier that day, perfectly captures the rage and frustration at the heart of his subject matter. The chorus is an unbridled howl of protest: “It ain’t me, it ain’t me/I ain’t no military son/It ain’t me, it ain’t me/I ain’t no fortunate one.”

Peaking at No.3 in the US in December 1969, a month after Nixon had appeared on television calling for national unity over the conflict in Southeast Asia, Fortunate Son only served to highlight the widening schisms in America.

It still does, more than half a century later, with the current presidential incumbent playing Fortunate Son at his rallies, most likely oblivious to the song’s meaning. In 2020, Fogerty issued a cease-and-desist notice, happily drawing attention to the President’s five draft deferments.

“Years and years ago, I remember saying something about, ‘Richard Nixon, man, he is a source of endless inspiration'”, Fogerty told Classic Rock. “I could probably say the same about Mr Trump. I wonder, where are all the other creative writers? I mean, come on, you guys and gals, get out there! There’s a whole lot to write about here.”

In 2025, in an interview with Vulture, Fogerty went further and singled out Fortunate Son as his ‘most misunderstood song’.

“That’s misunderstood by a small percentage of people – people who seem to be conservative, right-wing, and probably Republican or some other ‘ism’ in that category,” said Fogerty. “And most notably by Mr Trump. It’s happened before where people thought it was a patriotic ditty to wave the flag and all that, not really understanding the cynicism and absolute defiance I had in the song.

“I mean, even if you don’t hear the rest of it, you should at least hear, ‘It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son‘. But if you don’t, then I guess you’re able to see the song in a different way.”

Fortunate Son‘s place in history is secure. In 2014, it was added to the Library Of Congress’s National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

Like any significant song, it’s been covered. By U2, Bob Seger, Clutch, Corrosion Of Conformity, Foo Fighters (with Fogerty), Santana, D.O.A., Minutemen, Bruce Springsteen, Circle Jerks, Joe Lynn Turner and dozens more.

And in 2025, Fogerty rerecorded Fortunate Son for his Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years collection, the album he made to celebrate regaining his publishing rights after half a century of legal battles. It was the final track on the album, still an emphatic, ever-visceral smackdown to those who abuse privilege.