Sharon den Adel

Sharon den Adel is the singer, principal lyricist and co-founder of Within Temptation, and one of the figures who established the template of symphonic metal fronted by a female voice. Born in the Netherlands in 1974, she formed the band in 1996 with Robert Westerholt. Hers is a soprano with clear diction and classically trained delivery, but what sets her apart is not the technique — it is the breadth of what she has done with it across nearly three decades. On the debut, Enter (1997), Within Temptation was a gothic doom band in which the clean voice contrasted with guttural vocals; on Mother Earth (2000) and The Silent Force (2004) came the full orchestral arrangement that would define the genre; and from The Unforgiving (2011) and Resist (2019) the band moved towards modern rock and pop song structures, the voice changing function in each of those phases. That willingness to reinvent the formula is what separates Within Temptation from many of its contemporaries, who stayed in the format that made their name. In 2017, going through a difficult personal period, she stopped writing for the band and created My Indigo, a solo project of quieter, more intimate music — work she described as necessary in order to be able to compose again. Within Temptation resumed afterwards, and she still fronts the group on Bleed Out (2023).