Ex-Nightwish singer Anette Olzon to release debut solo album “Shine”

Anette Olzon – Biography

In a biography for the first solo album of Swedish singer Anette Olzon you cannot get around one name. So let’s get it over with: Yes, Anette Olzon had been the front woman of Finnish symphonic metal superstars Nightwish for five years before she had to leave the band in late 2012. And though all that belongs to the past and doesn’t affect her solo career since the sound of her own songs deflects considerably from that of Nightwish’s, those five years have after all established her on the musical map on a global scale. In other words, many music fans around the world will be interested in how it might sound, Anette Olzon solo and with her own songs.

The singer herself is equally eager to finally let the world know. “I had to be quiet about it, which was hard because you want to tell the world that you are happy about something,” says the 42-year-old power woman who wouldn’t speak ill of her former band, not even upon request. Her classy motto: Look forward and don’t dwell in the past! And, looking forward, there it comes into sight, her aptly titled first solo album“Shine”.

Contrary to what one might expect, Anette didn’t write the ten songs of the album after her departure from Nightwish but back in 2009 when, agitated by a tiresome tour and private calamities, she sat down for the first time in her musical career to write songs of her own. “Back then it was more of a side project and when I got pregnant we had to put those songs in the desk again. But I have been patiently awaiting to have time again to work on them with Stefan Örn and Johan Glössner,” Anette remembers and doesn’t shy away from admitting that her solo debut wasn’t conceived without help. None other than Anders Bagge – known as jury member of Sweden’s “Idols” offshoot as well as producer for international music luminaries like Madonna, Céline Dion or Jennifer Lopez – and his songwriter team consisting of Stefan Örn and Johan Glössner helped Anette shaping her ideas into the audio diamonds which can now be found on “Shine”.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that”, she says. “If there’s a good songwriter, why not use it? I have done like one third of the things on the album but still I have to have other people around me who can do the music and arrange it. The guys I work with, Stephan and Johan, they do song writing for a living and write for big artists. They know how to make the songs better. When I have an idea I can sing the melody to them and they transform it into this wonderful piece of music. You need to have people around who can help you if you are not really good at song writing yet and maybe also a bit afraid of it since it is your first time.”

Being able to process her own thoughts in song lyrics has been a completely new experience for the outwardly happy Swede. She may have been singing in bands since the age of 16, but only other people’s lines. “I was always satisfied with that because I always enjoyed working in a team,” she says today. “But when we had a little break after that long tour with Nightwish in 2009 there were many bad things going on in my personal life, like my divorce or my mother having cancer. I wanted to get all those things out of my system.” Which resulted in those songs which can now be found on“Shine” and will surely be interpreted as Anette’s reaction towards her separation fromNightwish: Song titles like ‘Falling’, ‘Floating’, ‘Lies’, ‘Moving Away’ or ‘Invincible’may have been written in 2009 but are welcome for up-to-date interpretation as well.

“‘Lies’ is actually a divorce song”, Anette explains. “When I entered Nightwish my ex husband wanted to divorce me. So in the middle of becoming a big singer in a big band and having my dream fulfilled I also had to go through a very hard divorce with a little son. I think I needed to write a song about that.” However, a song like that can work on different levels, she agrees. “That thing with Nightwish was also like a divorce, a really hard divorce. It’s always like that when people separate and go in different directions with hurt feelings.”

Photo Credit: © Patrick Ullaeus

You can’t help but notice that Anette Olzon has quite a bit on her mind since strikingly many songs deal with pain and loss, snuggling as melancholic semi-ballads into the auricle. But in the face of her outward cheerfulness she’s always had a sad and melancholic streak inside, she says. “In my childhood I was bullied in school and my parents divorced when I was quite young. So I’ve always been the kind of person that when you enter the room I’m like the happy little girl that wants everyone to laugh and be happy. I’m like a clown who is really happy on the outside but has a very dark melancholic thing inside as well that needs to come. And that’s what I did with these songs.”

However, Anette is aware that sadness and melancholy belong to life just as much as cheerfulness and pleasure do and hence doesn’t succumb to negativity or self-pity on her album. On the contrary, by facing her painful experiences she vanquished them and thus grows stronger. Accordingly, the album title “Shine” does eventually convey a confident and powerful message: No matter what happens to you and how people treat you – always shine!

“I chose this title because the album is of course a little bit melancholic in many ways but there is also a lot of hope in it, there’s sunshine through the rain, that’s what I wanted to show with this ‘Shine’. And no matter what happens to you, you can always choose to stay strong, choose the sunshine and the positive things, no matter how dark it is in life.”

So to come full circle: What does the first solo outing sound like for Anette Olzon? Not like Nightwish, or like Alyson Avenue, the Swedish rock band Anette was singing in before she joined Nightwish.

From the defiant rocker ‘Shine’ via the mighty power anthems ‘Falling’ and ‘Lies’, where Anette makes the most of the enormous range of her beautiful voice, through to the saccharine ballads ‘Moving Away’ and ‘Floating’, her debut presents everything a good album should have. Its absolute highlights, however, are those two songs she wrote for two very special men in her life: The dreamy goose bumps song ‘Invincible’which she dedicated to her oldest son, and the heart-melting ‘Watching Me From Afar’, a declaration of love for her present husband – if this piano ballad with its stirring drum background doesn’t move you then you are surely beyond help.

The epic piano power ballad ‘One Million Faces’ is the only new song on the album which Anette did not only write with “her two boys” but also with the help of two other songwriters from Within Temptation (Martijn Spierenburg) and the Swedish power metal group Bloodbound (Fredrik Bergh). “In the end, it is a rock album” says Anette.“A pop rock album, maybe. Or would you call it pop metal?”

Whether metal album, rock album, pop album or pop rock album, “Shine“ is an astonishing album. It exceptionally masters the splits between melancholy and hope, between fragility and power. It showcases an artist who doesn’t rest on her laurels but heads boldly into the future. It shines.