Floor Jansen

[Mendalla]

I have debated for a while whether to start a thread here on Floor. As most know, she is my current favorite singer and I am a charter member on Floorworld, the fansite she and her support team kicked off about a year ago (the first anniversary was last Saturday). She has now been in the music business for 25 years, starting in the Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever at the age of 16. She is now the lead singer of Nightwish, one of the biggest bands in the genre. After a successful appearance on the Dutch TV show Beste Zangers (Best Singers), she realized that maybe it was time for her to take a stab at being a solo artist. She started with covers recorded in her home studio during the pandemic. Then, in March 2022, she dropped Fire, a powerful pop anthem that was the first song she ever released under her own name (she has always been in a band in the past). Now she is up to four solo singles and her first solo album, Paragon, drops on March 24.

The latest single, "Invincible" is powerful stuff. The theme is PTSD and how people overcome their traumas. It was originally written for the Invictus Games, the athletic event for veterans recovering from physical and mental injuries but the video extends the theme to others suffering PTSD from other sources of trauma. With a strong rhythm line of drums and pulsing strings behind Floor's well-honed soprano voice, it's a powerful anthem.

 

[Mendalla]

The first three solo songs have been posted in other threads before, but I'll collect them up here so they are one place. Floor made a conscious decision to not do metal in her solo work. She is, after all, still in a massively popular metal band which has one of the best songwriters in rock leading it (Finnish composer and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen). The solo work therefore became a chance to do something different after two decades in metal and hard rock.

"Fire" was the first single and signalled that, metal or not, Floor was not holding anything back. Reflecting on the revival of the world as the pandemic became less of a concern, it has her belting at full throttle.

"Fire" was followed by "Storm". This one led me to reflect on Floorworld (or was it here?) that it sounds like something from a musical. One of those songs where the lead reflects on what has happened and prepares to take charge and make their mark. Given that Floor has studied musical singing and her biggest solo hit to date is a cover of "Phantom of the Opera" by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, sung with former Phantom stage star Henk Poort, that sound is probably not coincidental. Again, Floor gets to belt at full volume, something she excels at.

Finally, there was "Me Without You". Jazzy, and even a bit torchy, it is about relationship struggles and endings. I think it was Floor herself that I saw comment that it is not necessarily about the end of a romantic relationship, but could be about rifts in a friendship.

 

[Mendalla]

So as we draw closer to the release of Paragon, I will be going back through Floor's extensive musical history as well as posting any new material that comes up.

 

[Mendalla]

In 2012, Floor joined Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish as a session musician, filling in after the band split with previous lead singer Anette Olzon. By 2013, she had become a full member of the band and remains their lead singer to this day and for the foreseeable future (in fact, band leader Tuomas Holopainen has said in interviews that if she leaves, the band is probably finished). And having her powerful voice and broad range has given Tuomas plenty to work with in his songwriting, turning out some of the best music of his career.

Floor's first studio recording with Nightwish was the 2015 album Endless Forms Most Beautiful. The title is taken from The Origin of Species and life, science, and evolution are constant themes on the album. There's even narration from Richard Dawkins. But the thing that stands out is Floor. While she does not use her classical voice much, she uses the full range of her highly trained and skilled rock voice in everything from lively rockers like Elan and Alpenglow, to the 20 minute epic The Greatest Show on Earth (evolution being the show in question). It marked a new chapter in Nightwish's and Floor's musical history, and the subsequent tour produced not one, but two, live concert DVDs and a live CD recorded at London's legendary Wembley Arena.

The title track:

The lead off track (which was also their concert opener on the tour):

Elan, a lively anthem, ranks among my top 5 Nightwish songs. Floor even included it in her solo concerts and solo live album.

And this live performance of another rocker from the album shows the band, and Floor, at their lively, energetic best.

 

[Mendalla]

"Our Decades in the Sun" is another great song from Endless Forms Most Beautiful. A touching ballad reflecting on family, it was recently revived in an acoustic arrangement for the European leg of their 2022 World Tour. Coming soon after Floor had surgery for breast cancer, it became even more poignant in that context. English multi-instrumental wizard Troy Donockley adds a lovely guitar accompaniment and backing vocals, but this performance really puts Floor front and centre. No official video is out yet, but this is a good quality fan video from a concert in Poland.

 

[Mendalla]

Nightwish first performed their metal version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" on the 2002 album Century Child and in subsequent tours. They dropped the song from their setlists in 2005 after parting ways with original lead singer Tarja Turunen, who sang it with bassist-vocalist Marko Hietala.

Current lead singer Floor Jansen had a hit with same song in her native Netherlands in 2019, when she paired up with Dutch stage singer Henk Poort (who has played The Phantom on stage) to sing it on the Dutch TV show Beste Zangers. And part of that duet was a plan to have Henk join Nightwish for a performance of the song. Then the pandemic intervened. Henk did sing it with Floor at her solo shows, but the Nightwish plan was shelved.

And then, last Fall, Nightwish hit the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam for a sold out two-night stand. And for the first time in 17 years, Phantom was on the setlist...

And notice how Henk has learned to be a metal singer. Foot up on a riser, bull horns out.

And Floor ... well, she brought the house down with that ending, as usual.

 

[Northwind]

When I see the title of this thread I think of my former physio, Jansen V (pronounced yahnsen). He's a character and an excellent physio.

I'll have to watch these videos and learn more about Floor Jansen.

 

[jimkenney12]

Just watch their rendition of Phantom of the Opera. My daughter messaged me that everyone should listen to it and I did. She said Floor has the voice of an angel

 

[Mendalla]

Just watch their rendition of Phantom of the Opera. My daughter messaged me that everyone should listen to it and I did. She said Floor has the voice of an angel

Your daughter has good taste. I discovered Floor three years ago when I got into Nightwish and she is probably my favorite singer in popular music right now.

 

[Luce NDs]

Nightwash is a kind of shady image ... like Bath 've Sheba ... very mysterious ... in essence a metaphor of phantom visions! Phantastic ...

 

[Mendalla]

Floor's second album with Nightwish is Human :||: Nature. Yes, really. That's how it tends to be typed. I'll post an image of how it actually looks on the album. The album was, unfortunately, released in early 2020. COVID hit right around the same time, which meant they could not tour the material until 2022.

With evolution and science already front and center on Endless Forms, Tuomas went big with this one. It's a two-CD set. The first disc is a traditional Nightwish album with the band performing a solid set of songs on a variety of themes. There's no silly love songs with Tuomas Holopainen. Themes range from music to our social media world to space. There's even a Celtic-y tune on the harvest by Troy Donockley. The second disc is something entirely new, an orchestral suite entitled "All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World". Band members contribute, especially Troy and Floor, but it is mostly the orchestra with some choral work. And it was, needless to say, controversial for hardcore metal fans. Folks like me, though, who came to Nightwish because of their "symphonic" side tend to love it.

The album cover, so you can see the title in its native form:

"Noise" is the second track on the album and is a nice, heavy rock tune that has been opening the concerts on the tour for H:||:N. It even has a powerful bit of Floor's operatic voice. This performance is from the virtual concerts they did in May 2021 when touring was still restricted due to the pandemic.

"Harvest" is a rare solo by English multi-instrumentalist (he plays acoustic and electric guitar, mandolin, Irish flute, uilean pipes and probably some more that I am forgetting) and vocalist Troy Donockley, with Floor on backing vocals. It's a rare position for Floor to be in (normally, it is Troy backing her) but she plays it well. Again, from the 2021 virtual show.

And then there's "Shoemaker", the talk of this year's tour. The title is taken from Eugene Shoemaker, the legendary US astronomer and comet finder most famous for Comet Shoemaker-Levy, which spectacularly crashed into Jupiter many years ago. Yep, a rock song inspired by stargazing. And it's the ending that had people talking, a powerful "Laudato" sung by Floor in her operatic voice which she nailed night after night over the course of the tour. Stirring, beautiful stuff, definitely not your old school metal. From Hellfest 2022 in France, here's one of Floor's best live performances ever.

 

[Mendalla]

And one piece from the second CD. "Ad Astra" is the conclusion of "All the Works..." and has been their concert closer, played as the band take their bows, with Floor returning to the mike to sing the wordless chorus of the finale live. It opens with a reading of Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot", which I tend to take as part of my personal scripture. This video from their record company's website promote the World Land Trust, an organization supported by the band on the current tour.

And now the song that may now be my favorite Nightwish song. "How's the Heart?" is not necessarily their "best" song, but it is a wonderful piece of music with stirring, emotional lyrics that Floor has really taken to heart and pours herself into. And it grabbed me with the strength of a cat pouncing on prey. It is (in my head, at least) the end title music for my story series "The Chronicles of Tana the Healer" and a song that earworms me regularly.

There's two versions. The original album version is a lively, energetic rocker that often has Floor dancing on stage. Then there's a softer acoustic ballad version that she sings with just Troy on guitar for backing. Both have been used on the current tour. Over the two nights of the virtual show, they did both versions. First night (the one I saw), had the acoustic version. Second had the full band version.

The band currently has studio time booked for this coming summer to record Floor's third studio album as lead, the band's tenth album overall. It will be released in 2024. After the epic that was Human :||: Nature, fans are eager to see what comes next.

 

[Mendalla]

And I learned this morning that Floor has been nominated for an Edison award in the Rock category, the top music award in The Netherlands, for her three solo songs from 2022 (which can be heard upthread). The recognition that she is getting in her homeland is a bit of a big deal because her association with metal, which is not that popular in The Netherlands, kind of kept her off the radar at home for many years. Apparently, a lot of Dutch music fans first discovered her in 2019 when she appeared on the TV series Beste Zangers even though she's been active as a professional musician since 1997.

 

[Mendalla]

My favorite singer celebrated her birthday today. Needless to say, this generated massive wave of posting on Floorworld as people sent birthday wishes. In celebration, here are some of the covers she released during the pandemic.

"Adagio" is a classic by Lara Fabian, which Floor handles with her usual skill and grace.

"Agape" is by the band Kadawatha, which is the surname of their founder/lead singer. There's some classic Floor long belts in here, much like the long held notes that were a hallmark of her singing on tour last year.

And "Alone". Floor is actually a fan of this song and had sung it before, including a memorable performance on a rock cruise with several other Nightwish members backing her.

And they say you are known by the company you keep. Well, musically speaking, Floor keeps good company. The first two feature backing tracks by Swedish musician-producer Tommy Johanssen, who plays alongside Floor's husband in the band Sabaton. The third features piano accompaniment from Dutch keyboardist-producer-songwriter Joost van den Broek, who has been working with Floor since he joined After Forever, her first band, in 2004.

 

[Mendalla]

"Do hear me, my voice?" Floor Jansen asks in "Daydream" the latest single from her upcoming album, Paragon. The answer from me is, "Hell, yes." One of Floor's best solo songs yet, right up there with the first couple, which have been my favorites so far. And now the countdown is officially on. One month to go until Paragon drops in all its glory.

 

[Mendalla]

This interview with Floor came out in print in Metal Hammer magazine a while ago but is now available online. It covers the 2022 Nighwish tour, the upcoming 10th Nightwish album (Floor's third with the band), the evolution of her budding solo career, and, of course, her breast cancer experience.

Nightwish's Floor Jansen: "Life is short. Time is not endless"

Floor Jansen opens up on her battle with breast cancer, going solo and what we can expect from the next Nightwish album

www.loudersound.com

Interesting that had she remained resident in the Netherlands, where breast screening starts at 50 (as in Ontario), they might not have caught her tumour for several more years but because she now lives in Sweden (her husband's home country) where they start routine screening at 40, she was diagnosed and treated early while the tumour was still quite small.

 

[Waterfall]

This interview with Floor came out in print in Metal Hammer magazine a while ago but is now available online. It covers the 2022 Nighwish tour, the upcoming 10th Nightwish album (Floor's third with the band), the evolution of her budding solo career, and, of course, her breast cancer experience.

Nightwish's Floor Jansen: "Life is short. Time is not endless"

Floor Jansen opens up on her battle with breast cancer, going solo and what we can expect from the next Nightwish album

www.loudersound.com

Interesting that had she remained resident in the Netherlands, where breast screening starts at 50 (as in Ontario), they might not have caught her tumour for several more years but because she now lives in Sweden (her husband's home country) where they start routine screening at 40, she was diagnosed and treated early while the tumour was still quite small.

That should change here too.

 

[Mendalla]

There are sometimes one-off bands or recordings that are "lightning in a bottle", they happen once and that remains their entire legacy. Northward is one of those bands. It began in 2007. Floor was on hiatus from After Forever and teamed up with Norwegian guitarist and songwriter Jorn Viggo Lofstad of the band Pagan Mind to do some writing. They ended up with enough songs for an album. The only problem? Health issues and full calendars got in the way. So, the music went on the shelf.

Then, in 2017, a window of opportunity opened. Floor was now with Nightwish which, like Pagan Mind, was on Nuclear Blast Records. And Nightwish was on a break, with Floor having just given birth to her daughter. So, Floor and Jorn put together a band (with her on vocals and Jorn on guitar plus a rhythm section) that they called Northward and went to work. The album, also called Northward, came out on Nuclear Blast the following year and it is a beauty. Probably my favorite non-Nightwish Floor album to this point (we'll see if Paragon manages to knock it into second place).

While both Floor and Jorn have metal backgrounds, the sound for Northward is hard rock, with some nice ballads mixed in for good measure.

The leadoff track pretty much captures the vibe, with Floor rocking the vocals and some great guitar-work from Jorn.

(and there used to be an official video for this but it seems to have vanished from Youtube, save in some reaction videos)

The sole remaining official video (it appears) is this lyric video for "Get What You Give"

"Storm In A Glass" is one of the Northward songs to get a second life in Floor's solo setlists of the past couple years, including her live album and video "Live from AFAS Amsterdam".

And the final song I'll include is special because it has not one, but two, Jansens on it. "Drifting Islands" is a duet between Floor and her sister Irene Jansen, something happens in concert far more than it does on records, so this really contributes to the "lightning on a bottle" feel of the record.

And that was it. 11 songs, one terrific album. No tours, not even a festival gig or two. But it remains highly regarded among Floor's fans and a few of the songs did get revived for her solo concerts of recent years so it has not completely vanished.

 

[Mendalla]

Today is a special day in Floor's life. Six years ago, she had a baby with husband Hannes Van Dahl. And her daughter is partly responsible for the first song she chose to cover for her pandemic covers. Like many little girls, she was obsessed with a certain song from a certain Disney movie. Instead of getting annoyed, Floor smiled politely and, as the song says, let it go. If you ever needed evidence that Floor can belt with the best of them, here it is.

And she followed it up a couple years later with "Into the Unknown" from Frozen II.

 

[Mendalla]

Welp, we thought Paragon, Floor's solo album, would be the big news of the week. And then this morning, she posts a picture of her and husband Hannes Van Dahl sitting with their daughter Freja between them. Freja is hiding her face (they try to keep her life as is private as possible for the daughter of a pair of fairly public rock musicians) with a picture of ... an ultrasound. Yep, they are having another baby. Needless to say, Floorworld has gone berserk at the news.