Floor Jansen

Welcome to Wondercafe2!

A community where we discuss, share, and have some fun together. Join today and become a part of it!

Register Log in
I am trying to think of a suitable Floor song to celebrate but the first one to come to mind has already been posted. "How's the Heart?" by Nightwish includes the beautiful, and appropriate, lines,

Now there's one who came from me
A child of Light, another tale

So I will just hearken back to another "birth", the release of Floor's first solo singles about a year ago. This live performance is from a Dutch TV talk-variety show. To the delight of longtime fans, she had her old friend Joost van den Broek on keys for this appearance.

 
While Paragon is now available in some time zones and some Floorworld members have received their physical copies, I am still enjoying the last single, which also happens to be the album's all-important opener. It is lively, energetic, even celebratory.


The girls in this video are meant to be younger versions of Floor and she posted pics of the actresses next to photos of her at the relevant ages and the casting director actually did a pretty good job.

And even as the solo album starts rolling out, Floor is en route to Tokyo for the final leg of Nightwish's tour. The Asian tour was supposed to have happened at the beginning of January but a change in the schedule for her cancer treatments forced a reschedule.
 
Well, here we are. After nearly 26 years in the music business, Floor has finally put out an album under her own name. And what an album. Only four of the ten tracks had not been previously released, but those four live up to the promise of the rest. It is a solid, consistent album right through from powerful declaration of "My Paragon" to the joyous, celebratory "Fire". Yep, she closes with the first single, released about a year ago. It's a terrific album that really highlights her range and power, even dialing things back for the lovely ballad "Hope." If I have a complaint, and it is a minor one, it's that a couple more lower key songs would have been nice. She can purr as well as she can belt and that's kind of missing here.

There is now a bit of a lag while Floor finishes up a Nighwish tour of Asia, then her solo tour of The Netherlands and the German-speaking countries, areas where she has built up an audience through television appearances, gets under way. Floor also has a return to AFAS Amsterdam, scene of her solo live album and video, booked for December. She has already changed one date on the tour because of her pregnancy. There is also the matter of studio time booked to record the next Nightwish album which could, again, be impacted by her baby.

A couple of the previously unreleased album tracks:

"Hope" as mentioned is a ballad that lets Floor dial it back a bit. She is actually just as good at softer singing as her usual belting and operatic flourishes, but does not do it as much.


"The Calm" puts strings behind her and gives full vent to her voice at the climax.

 
Aaaaand Paragon is number one on iTunes in The Netherlands and number two on the Dutch charts. All the work Floor has done to build her career in her home country seems to be paying off. She is still in Asia with Nightwish (today was Manila, Philippines), but prep continues for her solo tour, with fan meet-ups scheduled in The Hague and Utrecht.

"I Want My Tears Back" predates Floor's time in Nighwish (it's from the 2011 album Imaginaerum) but it's a song that has very much become hers. It is the song where I like to joke that I went to a metal concert and a ceilidh broke out. The Irish-influenced instrumental bridge usually has Floor dancing jigs. However, her intro to the instrumental (starts around 2:37 in the video) in this performance from Osaka, Japan is wonderful, "Usually I would be running, I would be jumping here but I am feeling really, really very pregnant today" (roughly). She still manages to dance up a storm even with "baby on board".

 
A post on Nightwish's Instagram has caused no little angst among some Floor and NW fan communities. The band has announced that once their Human:Nature tour concludes (finally) in June, they are taking an indeterminate break from live performances. That includes no tour for the next album when it drops next year (they are recording it this summer). Some of the reasons are obvious: Floor is about become a mother for the second time and her first child is starting school. But the announcement was rather vague and that's part of the reason for some of the angst.

On the upside, with no Nightwish tour next year, Floor is going to be free to be a Mom and maybe pursue her solo career further. She starts her solo tour, which covers The Netherlands and the German-speaking countries where she is well-known from TV appearances, on Monday and the album has been doing well in her home market.

A Youtuber named Keith Harris has put together this long video that gives a nice sampler of her career to date, covering all her bands, her TV appearances, and her solo work. A "Floor-gasm", by the way, is fan speak for those moments when Floor's voice soars into the Stratosphere and takes us along for the ride.

 
And the big tour is underway. Three concerts so far and by all accounts (admittedly, biased ones since I am hearing them from Floor's fan community), she is hitting on all cylinders, even with baby on board. Videos, both official and fan, are popping up all over Youtube. Besides the actual concerts, Floor is doing some media appearances to promote the album as well. Here's a sampling of those first.

"Daydream", first released as a single a month or so before the album, remains my favourite song of the bunch. Not sure why it sticks so hard with me, but it does. And this live performance earlier today on the Dutch streaming radio station Radio Veronica is excellent.


"Hope" is the softest song on the album, a lovely ballad amidst the mostly anthemic tracks. Yesterday in her concert in Utrecht, she dedicated this track to Ger, the tour's truck driver, who suffered a heart attack backstage after the previous night's concert.

 
Last edited:
And then a few from onstage. These are from the 013 club in Tilburg, Netherlands the other night. This is the largest venue on the tour, with a capacity of 3000, and it sold out, as have most of her solo concerts at this point.

Not surprisingly, she kicks off with her first solo single, the powerful "Fire".


"Armoured Wings" starts as another softer song but packs a nice punch when it gets going.


And the first of her solo covers during the pandemic still holds a place in her setlists. This still ranks as my favorite version of the song (sorry, Idina).

 
Last edited:
Footnote: A Finnish member of Floorworld who is a longstanding fan of Floor and Nightwish actually traveled to The Netherlands just for this tour and is attending, IIRC, three of the concerts as well as hanging out with various friends she has made on the site.
 
Nice interview with Floor from Dutch television just before her concert in Tilburg, Netherlands a couple weeks back. 013 (the name of the club she played) was the largest venue on her Dutch tour, 3000 capacity, sold out. They mostly discuss her pregnancy and the solo album but her brush with breast cancer comes up, too. Her history comes up a bit, too, since she started her vocal studies in Tilburg and lived in the area in her youth.

Saturday, she plays the largest concert on her docket for her solo gigs this year, supporting American thrash metal legends Metallica in Amsterdam. Sold out capacity of 50,000. She's played similar and larger audiences with Nightwish so it's not totally new for her, but it is her largest solo gig and her first time opening for a major band (vs. singing in one).

If you turn on Closed Caption (cc button on the right bottom), they are provided in English.

 
Last edited:
And here we go. It's almost evening in the Netherlands. Floor is in the arena and has been sharing some pics and video from her phone with the fan club. Sometime this afternoon Eastern Time, I hope to start hearing news from the Floor fans who are in the arena (a number had already bought tickets to see Metallica before she was announced as a supporting act, others managed to snag last minute tickets after her announcement). While I know Floor is probably wrestling with a mix of feelings about this, one wonders if this one will dominate in the end.


"Euphoria" won Eurovision in 2012 for Swedish singer Loreen. Floor recorded this performance for a special edition of the Dutch TV series Beste Zangers and also included it on her 2022 live album Live from AFAS Amsterdam. For the Beste Zangers performance, she actually appeared remote from Sweden rather than joining them in the studio because she had her gall bladder out not longer before while rehearsing with Nightwish in Finland.
 
Last edited:
LOL, and what's the first clip I see from the performance? Yep, "Euphoria". And one of those present mentioned the magic word "Henk" which means the crowd likely got treated to a performance of "The Phantom of the Opera".
 
Yep, and they're off. Floor got Henk in there, too. Sound's not the greatest, but gives you a sense of the scale here. Even Nightwish's show at the Ziggo Dome that I posted upthread wasn't this big. And damned if she didn't stick the landing on this one once again, accompanied by a marvelously energetic performance by Henk.

 
So after a successful tour of the Netherlands and the surprise appearance as a supporting act for Metallica, Floor is now off on a tour of the German speaking countries (several German dates plus Zurich, Switzerland and Vienna, Austria). Why the German-speaking world? A little over a year ago, Floor appeared on German television in a season of the music reality show Sing Meinen Song. It's the German counterpart of Beste Zangers, the Dutch show that more or less launched her solo career but presented her with a unique challenge: German was a relatively new addition to her arsenal of languages and being on the show meant she had to speak and sing in it. The outcome? She nailed it, of course. Here's a couple of her performances from the show.

"Unikat" by German EDM-pop duo SDP


"Zu Schnell Vorbei" by singer-songwriter Clueso. She's including this one in her setlists on the German tour.


And a favorite performance among fans is from the duet show. SDP had covered Nightwish's "Amaranth" on the Floor Jansen episode of the show, which proved to be Floor's favorite from that program. So, she joined them for a marvelous reprise of their version.


Footnote: I think Floor is now up to five languages. Dutch (first language), English (which she mostly sings in and speaks fluently), Swedish (since her husband is a Swede and they've made his country their family home), Finnish (she's in a Finnish band), and now German.
 
Last edited:
And my favorite of the covers of Floor's work from the show. Singer-songwriter Elif boldly took on "Fire", Floor's first solo single, which was still fairly new when the show was shot (Floor actually did the first live performance of "Storm", the second single off Paragon, on the show) . It's a toned down version from Floor's anthemic original but Elif did a nice job with it.

 
The German tour is going like gangbusters. Cheering crowds, hordes of fans lining up, and fantastic performances from Floor and her tour band. This is from Vienna, Austria the other day, the powerful opening track off her album. Credit goes to Floorworld member MarcoPugno who shoots some of the best fan vids I have seen and has been at several concerts on this tour.

 
The solo tour is over (save three more festival dates in The Netherlands and the December show in Amsterdam) but Floor is still working hard, singing in the final few Nightwish concerts before their touring break starts. They are bouncing all over Europe but one show has fans pumped more than any other: On June 16, they will play in Kitee, Finland, which is basically the band's hometown. Most of the founding members were from Kitee and two, keyboardist and songwriter Tuomas Holopainen and guitarist "Emppu" (it's a nickname but it's how almost everyone knows him) Vuorinen, remain in the band to this day.

Floor's "bump" is, of course, growing more all the time but somehow she still manages to pull off her famous windmill style of headbanging, bending over and spinning her hair in a way reminiscent of the windmills of her homeland (see the ending of the second video below). She even slipped in a change to the lyrics of "How's the Heart?", with the line "Now there's one who came from me" becoming "Now there's one (or two) who came from me" in at least one performance.

From Athens, Greece a few night ago, Floor and the boys in action.

This song never fails to get a crowd rocking out and singing along.


And one of the most amazing pieces ever to come from this, or any, band. It has survived several lineup changes mostly intact. If anything, it has gotten better under Floor who took the ending to new heights right from the beginning of her tenure. Ten minutes, several changes of mood and tempo. It's closer to being a marriage of rock and classical than most prog rock ever achieved.

 
Last edited:
There is something very hot about her very physical singing coupled with her obvious fecundity.
 
And today is the day. Nightwish and Floor fans are descending on the baseball stadium in the town of Kitee, Finland for an historic hometown gig by Nightwish. The town has a population of a hair over 10,000. The venue has a capacity of 10,000 as well, but there's plenty coming from outside Kitee so I am betting on a sellout, or close to it. To give you an idea of how big Nightwish is in their home country and how important they are to Kitee, the town actually has a permanent exhibition of Nightwish memorabilia (supported, no doubt, by the band themselves). I am betting that baseball stadium is going to be rocking hard tonight (their time, afternoon ours). And the Nightwish battle cry, "We Were Here!" will echo for days to come.

One of two songs on Endless Forms Most Beautiful to feature that phrase is Alpenglow, a rousing, cheerful rocker that has them dancing in the aisles and Floor belting at her finest. It's not on their current setlist (unless something has changed) but this performance from Mexico City on the Endless Forms Most Beautiful tour in 2015 gives the necessary effect.

 
"Nemo" predates Floor's time in Nightwish. In fact, it goes back to original lead singer Tarja Turunen. However, Floor has very much made it her own, even including a subdued acoustic rendition in solo shows. Here she is singing it in Vaasa, Finland the other day, the band's second show in their home country on this short spring tour and their second last before their "indefinite" touring break starts.


"Sleeping Sun" comes from the band's early days in the late nineties, inspired by a solar eclipse. It originally came out as a single and then appeared on later pressings of their album Oceanborn. For my money, this is the band at their finest and given its early date in their history, presages the brilliance to come.


Remember I mentioned that she was still windmilling, pregnancy or no? Here you go. "Last Ride of the Day" was apparently inspired by, of all things, the final ride on a day at an amusement park. It dated to Imaginaerum, the album just before Floor's arrival and the tour she joined midway through. It's one of their rockier tunes and almost always gets a great intro from Floor (have I mentioned that she's a great emcee as well as singer).

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top