Next up in our series of interviews is the lovely Sharon Den Adel from WITHIN TEMPTATION. To date, the band have sold well over a million albums worldwide and this week have released an album of their most famous tracks, stripped down to their bare acoustic bones. An Acoustic Night At The Theater is in stores NOW.

Below Sharon gets to grips with the questions we are posing to a number of our artists, so read on to Get To Know Sharon…

What were you doing when we interupted you to do this?
Well not much. I had to get up very early- I think around 6, 6:15. Then I pulled myself out of bed, picked up our manager and drove to the airport and from there just got myself over here [to the RR UK offices] by cab.

Date of birth?
12th of July dot dot dot

What did you want to be when you were at school?
Well it was not really occupied with things I want to be but more what I wanted to do at the time. I never really knew what I wanted to be because singing was he thing I loved most. It seems so far away to reach a certain point where you want to be a singer in a band or something, so that was not really on my mind but I was always busy with music. In the end what I came up with was I wanted to be a designer and that’s what I did before I became full time in a band. But my passion was music, always.

So what was the first instrument you ever played?
I’ve never played an instrument, just my vocals. I’ve been singing since I was really little and consciously I think from the age of four probably- really young- but it starts that way or it doesn’t. Its not like you think, when you’re thirty ‘I want to be a singer’. You either are a singer or you’re not.

First band you were in?
Well the first band I was ever in was the school band in high school, I think I was twelve or thirteen or something like that and I can only remember us playing ‘If I Had A Hammer’? That’s embarrassing that song (oh my god I hate the song) but we had to play certain songs for school. The first actual band I was in was when I was fourteen and it was called ‘Koshiro’. It was a blues rock band playing songs from Stevie Ray Von to Van Halen, Journey- all kinds of stuff- but the guys I was in the band with were a little bit older than me. I was fourteen and they were like twenty so there was a bit of an age difference, but through them I got to know and love metal bands, all sorts, like Alice in Chains and stuff like that so my first introduction through that band.