Nightwish’s Floor Jansen to release ‘pop’ solo single in March

Nightwish‘s Floor Jansen has revealed plans to release a new single in the coming weeks. The 40-year-old Dutch-born singer, who made her live debut with Nightwish nearly a decade ago, shared a timeline for the arrival of her new solo music during a YouTube livestream earlier today.

As you know, I’ve been writing music; I’ve been telling you about this for months and months. Thus far, I’ve only been saying, ‘A new song will come. A new song will come.’ And so I’ve been writing. There’s a lot of songs ready, and now there’s actually one song ready to be released. And so the thing I can tell you today is that the first song will come on the 25th of March. So now we can finally count down to a moment where something all new will come.

Floor Jansen, transcribed by Blabbermouth

It’s a pop song, so it’s not metal, it’s not rock, but it’s definitely me. I guess it’s more of a mash-up [of styles] actually though it’s not so extreme as in genres, like all of a sudden it becomes… Here’s a metal song and here’s a rock song and this is more poppy… I mean, pop music — the word of it — [it’s short for] popular music, and it kind of describes a lot, and within that it falls. I can only say that it’s not metal and it’s not rock, but it will have its influences and it will have a part of the sound. It can’t even be so that the first song is how everything else will sound like because, yeah, if you know Nightwish and also for us, it’s always so hard to pick just one song that’s gonna be like the kick-off of an album but it can never really represent everything. And I guess it’s the same for this first song that comes on the 25th of March.

Floor Jansen, regarding the musical direction of her solo track.

And it really kickstarted my own creativity that I haven’t really been able to use over the years,” she said. “It’s nice that it gets out. And I would like to do more of that and actually finish that album and make those steps and find a way to combine a solo career with Nightwish and my life at home, which I even more value after spending so much time here in this green heaven [in Sweden] where I live

Floor had been working on the solo album since before the pandemic

After 20 years of rock and metal, I think I would like to do something else. I don’t mean stop with NIGHTWISH, but something alongside it.

I was recently involved in a TV show in my home country in the Netherlands [reality TV show Beste Zangers, which translates to Best Singers]. That really inspired me to start writing, and the stuff that has come out is very calm.

I would love to make an album where less actually is more. Something different — not because I’m bored, but because if you are already in one of the biggest bands in your own genre, and you have someone like Tuomas Holopainen as a songwriter, I don’t really see that I’d be adding anything by making another metal album myself.

Floor Jansen to Metal Hammer Magazine