NIGHTWISH's FLOOR JANSEN Didn't Mind Not Being Involved In Songwriting On 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful'

On February 12, FaceCulture conducted an interview with NIGHTWISH singer Floor Jansen. You can now watch the chat in two parts below.

Asked if she missed being involved in the songwriting process during the making of NIGHTWISH‘s new album, “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”, Floor said: “No. This was [my] first time to really work on an album from scratch, written by mainly [NIGHTWISH keyboardist/mainman] Tuomas [Holopainen], and Marco [Hietala, bass/vocals] as well. ‘This is the vocal line. This is the lyric. Go ahead.’ But I feel so fortunate to work people who can write songs like they can, and have that typical NIGHTWISH sound. One thing that connects all the eras of NIGHTWISH is that particular sound. Then my little ego is just fine with saying, ‘I don’t have to write for this. This is gonna be awesome anyway.’ And it is. That doesn’t mean that there is no creative input from me whatsoever. ‘Cause there you have the piano playing the vocal line and those lyrics, there is a certain phrasing you can do that Tuomas had in mind — like how the words have to be divided on the melodies — but then it becomes a vocal puzzle, where my creative input comes in: ‘I can sing it like this, I can sing it like that.'”

She continued: “I’ve been trying a couple of things out at home. But then we went into the rehearsal studios and we actually took quite some time to rehearse the songs and really go through and through and through everything, which gave me the time to really get things into my system and to work together at getting those songs right, playing with the vocal possibilities. ‘Should we give it the rock vibe, or should it be a little more poppy? At least not too edgy? Or could we throw in some opera here?’ It was a nice puzzle to make, where everybody, as an equal, came in with ideas and went through the whole song, finishing, arranging the songs. We all really had our input there, which is, I think, part of the reason why this album also gives a bit more of a band vibe into the sound. It’s not as orchestral, even though it’s very much there still. But it’s a band effort there that shines through, and that, for me, felt very natural coming out of a position where I’m usually more involved in the songwriting.”

Asked if she felt an itch to come up with her own ideas during the making of the new NIGHTWISH album, Floor said: “Not really, because the creative input I had to offer was still there. So I didn’t feel like, ‘Now I need to go home and write something just because I couldn’t do it in this.’ Even though every once in a while ideas pop up and I record some ideas. But I really didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything being involved in this album.”

“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” will be made available on March 27 in Europe and March 31 in the U.S. via Nuclear Blast.

“Èlan” video: