{"id":331683,"date":"2025-12-23T14:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T14:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331683\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T14:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T14:48:09","slug":"within-temptation-and-tarjas-paradise-what-about-us-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331683\/","title":{"rendered":"Within Temptation and Tarja’s Paradise (What About Us): the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Within Temptation<\/a> and Nightwish<\/a> released their debut albums in 1997, there wasn\u2019t a name for the kind of music they made. Within Temptation\u2019s Enter, released in April, took obvious influence from gothic metal<\/a> bands like Paradise Lost, but its grandiose, elegiac compositions and symphonic undertones hinted at the direction the band would eventually take. Conversely, Nightwish\u2019s Angels Fall First, released in November, approached metal from a different direction, drawing more directly and heavily on folk and classical music.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, both bands would spearhead the symphonic metal movement of the early 2000s. But, anchored as it was around two charismatic women \u2013 Sharon den Adel and Tarja Turunen respectively \u2013 history tells us surely there must have been some rivalry. Symphonic metal\u2019s answer to Blur vs Oasis perhaps, or Mustaine vs Metallica<\/a>?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“You look so beautiful, Sharon!\u201d beams Tarja, as her counterpart joins a Zoom call. Erm… maybe not then.<\/p>\n

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Hammer is speaking to both vocalists more than a decade on from their collaboration on the Within Temptation song Paradise (What About Us?), the lead single from 2014\u2019s Hydra. As soon as Sharon joins, any notion of tension is quashed. Tarja\u2019s expressive face lights up and the pair chat animatedly.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a clear camaraderie between them as they joke and discuss new developments. Which raises the question, was the \u2018rivalry\u2019 just a load of bollocks?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my God! There was so much talk, like, \u2018I bet there\u2019s a real rivalry going on between you and Sharon\u2019,\u201d Tarja says, hissing like a cat to illustrate her point. \u201cI was just very happy to see more girls singing in bands. It made me feel really proud of the movement. I still am!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t even really become aware of the idea of \u2018symphonic metal\u2019 until later when journalists started giving it a name,\u201d Sharon admits. \u201cI don\u2019t think there was much overlap between Nightwish and Within Temptation. The music was very different but because there were some similarities, people had to give it a name!\u201d<\/p>\n

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There was so much talk, like, \u2018I bet there\u2019s a real rivalry going on.’<\/p>\n

Tarja Turunen<\/p>\n

Those similarities were enough to turn Within Temptation and Nightwish into leaders of the burgeoning symphonic metal movement, however. Sharon and Tarja were soon upheld as inspirations for a subsequent wave of symphonically inclined artists that included Epica, Leaves\u2019 Eyes and Delain, dispelling the notion of metal as a boys\u2019 club.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often felt like the strange duck on the festival bill because there was
a woman in the band where most bands had male singers,\u201d Sharon says. \u201cPlus, I wasn\u2019t really from the scene when I started out \u2013 I was a big grunge girl!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI started out in classical music so I was a complete weirdo in metal, too!\u201d Tarja chimes in. \u201cThough I never let that experience bother me. I felt the embrace of the crowd, but also our colleagues were really nice, so I never needed to grow balls. Although, maybe I got used to it, because I had two brothers at home and was the only girl in my primary class. Six years with nothing but boys! Urgh!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Although separated by more than 2,000 kilometres, it wasn\u2019t long before the pair became aware of each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first heard Within Temptation, I was like, \u2018This woman has such an angelic voice\u2019,\u201d recalls Tarja. \u201cWe must\u2019ve still been working on that first Nightwish record, so I\u2019ve been aware of them from the very beginning, really!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Sharon\n<\/p>\n

Sharon singing with Within Temptation in 2004 (Image credit: Peter Pakvis\/Redferns via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I became aware of Nightwish, we played a festival together,\u201d says Sharon. \u201cPeople were really excited about the band so we went to see them. We were blown away by Tarja\u2019s presence onstage. It was so powerful… so diva!\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the bands\u2019 chances to cross paths proved surprisingly few and far between. By the end of the 2000s, Within Temptation were undeniably still symphonic metal scene leaders. They\u2019d also grown tired of the tag. Both 2004\u2019s The Silent Force and 2007\u2019s The Heart Of Everything had topped the charts in their native Netherlands \u2013 as well as charting internationally \u2013 but the group were getting increasingly itchy about where they could go next. 2011\u2019s The Unforgiving was a sprawling, multimedia concept record that saw the band incorporate more pop influence into their music. Now the pressure was on to reinvent themselves again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHydra was our most difficult album,\u201d Sharon acknowledges. \u201cWe were very much searching for direction, because we\u2019d already achieved our biggest sound. So it wasn\u2019t like we could go much bigger than that, particularly in terms of symphonics. We were searching for a way to evolve and take inspiration from something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Tarja\n<\/p>\n

Tarja on stage with Nightwish in 2004 (Image credit: Paul Bergen\/Redferns via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

As it turned out, Tarja was delighted by the opportunity. She\u2019d been trying to catch up with Sharon over the years, but their schedules had never aligned. Now they were working together, they could connect properly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like I\u2019d known her forever,\u201d Tarja says happily. \u201cI kind of felt that connection even before we met; Sharon must have gone through so many similar things to myself. We could recognise each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although they were bonding, there was still a distance between Tarja and Sharon \u2013 physically, at least. Tarja provided her vocals remotely from a studio in Buenos Aires, where she was living with her husband and infant daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was bubbling with the joy of being a new mother and my family travelled with me everywhere, even to the studio when I recorded [2013 album] Colours In The Dark,\u201d Tarja says. \u201cI\u2019d faced a lot of challenges of my own; I wasn\u2019t really trusting in my abilities as a songwriter, for example. Paradise helped me so much, because it was so nice to even be asked about something like that. I think I had been waiting \u2013 without knowing \u2013 for something big to really happen. I didn\u2019t doubt for a millisecond that this collaboration would be special!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an exciting time, but the creative tumult meant some ideas almost got scrapped entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cParadise (What About Us?) was one of the few more typical Within Temptation songs on that album, but that whole record took a lot of searching,\u201d Sharon remembers. \u201cI actually wrote it with our keyboardist, Martijn [Spierenburg], and when I first looked back on it I was like, \u2018Urgh, this is too much!\u2019 It was Robert [Westerholt, guitars and Sharon\u2019s husband] who insisted it was really good, and he wrote the song\u2019s main riff. I had originally written it with just lines on the piano, but he added a whole different flavour to it that really worked. Otherwise Paradise might\u2019ve ended up in the waste bin!\u201d<\/p>\n

During the writing process for the record, Within Temptation decided to reach out to a number of guest vocalists, feeling they could add unique flavours to the music. They signed up former Killswitch Engage<\/a> vocalist Howard Jones, Soul Asylum\u2019s Dave Pirner and even rapper Xzibit, but by far their biggest coup was enlisting Tarja to sing on lead single Paradise (What About Us)?.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were two reasons we wanted Tarja for Paradise,\u201d Sharon admits. \u201cNot only for her voice \u2013 we felt like she could really add something \u2013 but also because in a more literal sense we figured it would be paradise for the fans! Ha ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

Within Temptation Ft. Tarja – Paradise Live at Hellfest Festival (2016) – YouTube
\n\"Within<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

As it turned out, the distance also helped Tarja interpret the song, and gave her a bit of breathing room to work on ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really nervous!\u201d she admits. \u201cI think if Sharon and the guys had been next to me, that would have been something completely different. Because I was somewhere else, I could get into the song in my own way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s also beautiful, because it means Tarja\u2019s meaning for the song became its own thing,\u201d Sharon adds. \u201cFor me, the song was about how we never learn from our mistakes as human beings. Because it\u2019s such a big and cinematic song, Tarja\u2019s voice added that enormity to it. She\u2019s the empress!\u201d<\/p>\n

Doing a song together, when nobody expected it, was so positive on every level.<\/p>\n

Sharon den Adel<\/p>\n

Released on September 27 2013, Paradise (What About Us?) finally united two of symphonic metal\u2019s leading ladies. Predictably, the response was ecstatic from critics and fans alike, and to date the song has amassed more than 30 million streams on Spotify<\/a>, as well as more than 100 million on YouTube.<\/p>\n

In turn, when its parent album, Hydra, was released on February 4, it quickly became Within Temptation\u2019s most successful release to date, topping the charts at home in the Netherlands while landing a Top 10 position in the UK (No.6) and Top 20 in the US (No.16).<\/p>\n

More than a decade on from its release, Paradise (What About Us?) feels like the moment Within Temptation drew a line under everything that had come before, saluting the original leading lights of symphonic metal while also elevating them beyond the genre and into arena-conquering territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing a song together, when nobody expected it, was so positive on every level,\u201d Sharon says. \u201cWe still have this connection after all these years, and our friendship has only grown from that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave me a new friend in my life,\u201d agrees Tarja. \u201cIt\u2019s a song of friendship to me. I\u2019m so happy we could bring people joy and love by working on this together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Within Temptation and Nightwish released their debut albums in 1997, there wasn\u2019t a name for the kind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-331683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}