Making Christmas Dark With TARJA

Interview by Kris Peters
Generally when the festive season rolls around and talk turns to
Christmas albums the general chill that runs down most metalheads
spines would rival that of the North Pole.
Far too often a purely commercial venture by smiling sonic
assassins out to further enhance their global acceptability, the
Christmas album tale has long been fraught with fear and
contempt.
The year 2017 was a welcome exception when song siren Tarja
released the devilishly wicked From Spirits and Ghosts (Score for a
Dark Christmas). That album further showcased the infinite well of
talent and creativity that defines Tarja, putting her own spin on
music that normally brings joy and cheer and turning them to the
dark side which such majestic beauty that even adults started to
believe in Santa Claus once more.
Well, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but it did mean we didn't
have to listen to Mariah Carey singing carols at every dark
turn.
This year Tarja returns with Dark Christmas on November 10,
broadening her horizons by tackling other artists interpretations
of Yuletide cheer such as Wham's Last Christmas, Mariah Carey's All
I Want For Christmas and Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime
and mixing them with her own reworkings of classics such as Frosty
The Snowman, Jingle Bells and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Plus, to put the veritable icing on the Christmas Cake, Tarja also
celebrates the happiest time of the year by releasing her own
Christmas original track, Dark Christmas.
In keeping with spreading love and cheer at this time of year,
Tarja sat down earlier this week for a chat with HEAVY to unwrap
the presents.
"You can call me a Christmas woman, alright," she smiled, laughing.
"This is my third Christmas album. To do an album like this, very
different, very much darker than usual… even though the songs that
you hear are the songs that everybody knows. But when you get to
listen to them, they have absolutely different arrangements. Very
cinematographic, dark arrangements. And so I love this Christmas
tradition that I have as an artist. It's a very, very important
part of my career. I'm doing tours every year, at the end of the
year since 2005. A long time."
We dive into Dark Christmas musically a bit deeper.
"This time I chose songs that are very, very known," she began.
"There's Jingle Bells and All I Want For Christmas Is You, Last
Christmas, White Christmas. I don't necessarily enjoy myself this
kind of music. The music that sounds in supermarkets when you get
there… it's too commercial and all yuk. So I wanted to escape from
all that and make these songs more appealing to me first of all as
an artist. I worked the arrangements with a man called Jim Dooley
in Los Angeles. He's working only for films with movie soundtracks,
so he understood my concept that I wanted to get was to get these
songs completely different. Of course, the melody you know, but
it's a completely different world when you emerge and listen to
these songs. In some songs this time I took some creepy kids. There
is a kid's choir brought into play from Argentina. My daughter
plays drums and the symphonic orchestra with my voice. That's about
it."
In the full interview, Tarja explains why there is a six-year gap
between Christmas albums, what she feels makes a true dark
Christmas, using the children's choir and what that added to the
songs, how she has reworked existing tracks to make them her own,
the obvious covers and how they differ, if she thinks it is a
child-friendly album, the original song Dark Christmas, making a
video for all twelve songs and more.