Sharon den Adel has an aura about her. You know when you meet someone who feels like they’ve lived a thousand lives before? Like they’ve gathered fragments of wisdom from each existence and carried them into the present? That’s Sharon.
Calling from her home studio in the Netherlands—where it’s currently minus two degrees—she appears exactly as you’d expect: a little rugged up but still radiating the same ethereal energy that makes her such a force on stage. Words like ‘witchy’ and ‘earthy’ spring to mind, but none of them quite do her justice. I think that’s where the music usually comes in.
Den Adel never planned to front one of the biggest symphonic metal bands in the world. In fact, she actually studied fashion at university. But the music was always there. Ticking away in the background waiting for her.
“I think music really was my first love,” she says, her eyes lighting up. “I remember when I was little, my brother got pocket money and I didn’t. So I asked my mum if I could have some too. She agreed—on one condition. I had to spend it on music.”
So, every Saturday, young Sharon would take her coins to the record store, exposing herself to anything and everything. But the first artist who made her want to sing? None other than Olivia Newton-John.
“I was four or five when I saw Grease for the first time. I must have watched it a thousand times,” she laughs. “I played the music on a daily basis. Her songs trained my voice. Of course, as I got older, I went into different styles, but Olivia always stayed.”
By fourteen, she’d joined her first band—a group where she was by far the youngest, playing alongside musicians in their twenties. It was here she was first introduced to metal.
“In the Netherlands, we don’t have a huge music history. So we looked elsewhere—Iron Maiden, the heavy stuff,” she says.
A few years later, she met Robert Westerholt. They started making music together, and, somewhere along the way, they fell in love. By 1996, they’d formed Within Temptation, blending the drama of film scores with the weight of metal. “At the time, we had Braveheart, Robin Hood—all these epic, orchestral soundtracks. That influenced us a lot.”
The band’s early years were touch and go. No one expected success. Den Adel kept her day job. But then Mother Earth happened.
“In the Netherlands, we had this thing called The Box. You could vote for your favorite song to see its video played. We made a video as a joke and encouraged people to vote for it. But The Box told us to take the post down—they didn’t even have our video.”
Two weeks later, everything changed.
“Suddenly, we were on The Box—and we made it into the top five. We eventually hit number two. That’s when we realised, oh, something’s happening.”
Fast forward nearly three decades, and Within Temptation are one of the biggest symphonic metal bands on the planet, known for their cinematic sound and Sharon’s hypnotic stage presence. Her signature hand movements—soft, fluid, almost like they’re conducting invisible forces—have become a staple of their performances. Turns out, they come from her childhood in Indonesia.
“I just close my eyes and do something,” she says. “I saw Balinese dancers as a child and was in awe of them—their hands were so magical.”
That movement takes over when she performs. “With older songs, like Angels, I really do go into a trance. That’s when the hands come up.”
Australia will witness this firsthand when Within Temptation land for Knotfest 2025, a festival den Adel is very eager to return for. Having visited the country when she was a child, Sharon is keen to experience it again as an adult. Not just any adult either, someone who has truly lived their art for decades.
Given this, I wondered what Sharon still wanted to do in her career. Whether she had any more runs she still wanted to put on the board. Upon asking, she had an immediate answer.
“Scoring a movie,” she says without an ounce of hesitation. But there’s something else, too.
“My husband and I get sick of each other,” she laughs. “We can’t be in the same room when we’re writing—we send ideas by email. But with the last album, we actually mixed it together. So, progress!”
She throws her head back with another laugh. “He once told me, ‘If you weren’t my girlfriend, I would have kicked you out of the band.’ I said, ‘Funny, I was thinking the same thing.’”
Knotfest 2025 will be touring Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney in February. Tickets can be accessed here.
