Floor Jansen

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Okay, when I heard that Lanternlight, the final single from Yesterwynde, was Floor's choice, I knew to brace myself. And she did not disappoint. Backed mostly by just Tuomas on piano and a string section with a bit of backing and added vocals by Troy, this is classic Floor Jansen. It could almost work as a Floor solo piece, to be honest.

And she's started hinting at an upcoming "surprise" which most of us fans are taking to mean a new solo track, whether cover or original.

 

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Artist interviews are a mixed bag, often poorly done or just focused on gossip or their "latest and greatest" work. But then there's the really good ones that get into what makes the artist tick and show you something of the person. Elizabeth Zharkoff of The Charismatic Voice is an opera singer and voice coach who does reaction videos and artist interviews that are very much a cut above the usual. Her own background helps, of course. And she just released a 1 hr 42 min video with Floor. And it is wonderful. Sure, they touch on the new Nightwish album. That's inevitable especially given its tortured history dating back to the pandemic. But they also geek out on vocal technique and training (both are trained singers, Elizabeth teaches voice and Floor used to), motherhood and its impact on being a touring artist (something both have experience with), the mental and physical stresses of touring, and so on. I'm not quite done, but the quality here is excellent and if you ever wanted to get a sense of what Floor is really like beyond her stage persona, here it is. She's forthright, honest, and as engaging as I've ever seen her. And, yes, the line about "Endless Laundry" is a play on a Nightwish album title.

And Floor herself put out a nice short video about Yesterwynde that she released the other day. Yes, that's her soon-to-be 1-year-old Lucy providing a backing track.

 

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It seems fitting that after an eventful couple years (solo and Nightwish tours, first solo album, cancer, baby), Floor returned to her first solo single from March 2022 and released a powerful new version "Fire (Stripped)". With more minimalist instrumentals, the most important instrument, Floor's voice, really shines this time. And it is not a remix. Floor recorded a new vocal track so this is a completely new version of one of her best solo numbers. The song debuted today on major streaming services and Floor was to perform it as part of an appearance on Dutch television as well.

Her other, even bigger announcement, is that she is doing a theater tour of The Netherlands next Fall. Besides singing, she will be talking about and reflecting on her eventful life as a performer, mother, and, yes, patient. Her cancer is to be part of the conversation. Three of ten shows are already sold out as of today.

 

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Here is the live version from Dutch TV. As I have come to expect from Floor, it's even better than the studio version.

Apparently the show also included appearances by her friends Anneke van Giersbergen, another Dutch metal vocalist, and Henk Poort, the Dutch stage star she first worked with during her season on the TV series Beste Zangers. To the everlasting delight of fans, her sister Irene made an appearance, too. If I could ask one wish of Floor, and I think a lot of fans would be with me on this, it would for a "Jansen Sisters" album and/or tour.

 

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And now, Floor's plans for 2025 are starting to shape up and it's looking spectacular. With the plans for the theater tour in place for the Fall (and she ended up adding a couple more dates to that due to demand) it is now looking like she's going to be doing rock festivals in the summer. She's already officially announced for Wacken Open Air in Germany, the high holy Mecca of metal and rock, and someone on Floorworld pointed out this morning that she's on the bill for Masters of Rock in the Czech Republic, too. She's played both before but as a member of bands. Most famously, she ended her first tour with Nightwish with a memorable concert at Wacken 2013 which the band nicely had their filmmaker of choice record. This will be her solo debut on the rock festival circuit.

So here she is in action at both. First up, the video that, almost five years ago, made me an almost instant fan. "Storytime" is a wonderful banger of a song from Nightwish's seventh studio album Imaginaerum to start with. But adding her powerful voice, even going into her operatic range at one point, just ratcheted things up a few notches.

And then from Masters of Rock 2015, another banger from Imaginaerum, "Last Ride Of The Day".

Yeah, I've probably posted both before but they are both iconic Floor performances so I can't get enough of either. And as a writer myself, the opening verse of "Storytime" gets me every time. It's a celebration of creativity and art like no other, really.

It was the night before
When all through the world
No words, no dreams, then one day

A writer by a fire
Imagined all of Gaia
Took a journey into a child-man's heart

A painter on the shore
Imagined all the world
Within the snowflake on his palm

A dream of poetry
A canvas of awe
Planet Earth falling back into the stars

 

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And Floor has kicked off her 2025 with a look back. Northward was a one off project of hers that I have raved about in this thread before. She teamed with Norwegian guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad in 2008 to write a bunch of songs. However, scheduling conflicts in their careers and lives prevented them from recording an album at the time. In 2018, they reteamed, added a rhythm section, and got to work. The album is, IMHO, Floor's best outside her work with Nightwish. And this video gives some reflections on the album and the songs from it, especially the ones that she has revived in her solo concerts. Of particular note is the song "Paragon", which is a direct connection between Northward and Floor's solo album of the same name with its opening track of "My Paragon", which is an answer to a question posed in the Northward "Paragon".

If you ever have a chance to hear Northward (it's on all the major streamers), do. Amazing piece of work.

This isn't Northward, but Floor's solo performance of one of the album's best tracks in her show at AFAS Amsterdam in 2021.

And "Drifting Islands" brings a special guest on board: Floor's sister Irene Jansen. The sisters sing together live a lot but rarely do on record so this is a special treat.

 

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One song Floor has an interesting comment on is the ballad "Bridle Passion". Apparently the title was originally just "Lullaby". At the time it was written in 2008, Floor was not yet a mother. In 2018, when they finally recorded it, she had just had her first child. And, yes, the song did get used as a lullaby.

From an appearance on Dutch television:

Guitarist here is Marcel Fisser, whose band backed Floor on her early solo concerts and who is still frequently a member of her backup bands.

 

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One of the highlights of last year for Nightwish and Floor Jansen fans was the release of Yesterwynde, the band's 10th studio album. There's some stellar music on the album and, despite recording only a few weeks after giving birth, Floor nails the vocals time and time again. The band is now nicely releasing lyric video for the "deep cuts" on the album, i.e. the ones that didn't get released as singles. One of which is "Something Whispered Follow Me", my current favourite from the album. And so, as Floor kicks off another year of her life (her birthday was yesterday), here is that song, showcasing one of her finest performances on the album.

 

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As I have discussed in this thread before, Floor is not just a fantastic singer, but also an accomplished lyricist and songwriter. And that really came to the fore with the band ReVamp, who I have been revisiting this past week. Floor started ReVamp after her previous band, After Forever, dissolved in 2009. ReVamp only lasted a short time (their last tour was in 2014 and Floor formally dissolved the band in 2016 since her commitment to Nightwish left no room for another band) and produced only two albums, but Floors singing and songwriting had achieved maturity, resulting in some terrific music and shows. A couple songs from that era still come up regularly in her solo shows.

Best of the batch, for my money, is "Sweet Curse". It began life as a female-male duet but here Floor sings it with her good friend Simone Simons, lead singer of the band Epica. And, yeah, Simone takes the "female" part while Floor sings the "male" part.

Another great song from ReVamp's self-title first album is "Kill Me With Silence", here performed live at the Graspop festival in 2010.

One thing I had forgotten about Wild Card, the band's second album, is that Floor did quite a bit of growling on it, a sound she otherwise uses very sparingly. The title track has her voice going from rock belts to opera to growls and back in a span of 4 minutes. If you ever needed evidence of the diversity and skill of this woman's talent, here it is.

"Wolf and Dog" also hails from Wild Card and remains in her set lists today. Her explanation of the song is that the "wolf" is her wilder side, taking energy from touring and performing on stage while the "dog" is her domestic side, taking energy from home and family.

And I will close with a cover I stumbled over. Floor's appearance on the Dutch TV show Beste Zangers in 2019 included a cover of "Shallow" by Lady Gaga. However, it was not her first time singing a Gaga song. In 2010, ReVamp did this marvelous metal take on "Bad Romance", with Floor pulling out all the stops, even tossing in some operatic belts and growls. And, dang, Floor looks like she's really having fun with this.