Former Nightwish vocalist Floor Jansen has shared how the band helped her recover from burnout.
Jansen joined the symphonic metal giants in 2013, having completed some live dates in the US the previous year as a stand-in replacement for her predecessor Anette Olzon. Olzon departed partway through a US tour, with Floor filling in for the remaining dates before officially joining the group the following year.
She sang on three Nighwish albums – 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful, 2020’s Human II: Nature and 2024’s Yesterwynde – before announcing her shock departure from the group in October.
Latest Videos From Louder
In a new interview with Metal Hammer for a My Life In 10 songs feature – where an artist revisits the songs from across their career that best tell their story – she reflected on how she suffered a nervous breakdown in August 2011, and how it almost affected her joining the symphonic metal giants at all.
“If they would have called me a month earlier, I don’t think I could have done it,” she admits. “I was sick for a year and a half; It was quite the struggle to be healthy and to do things my way. They say the time it takes you to burn out is how long you’ll need to regain your energy. I was trying to figure out why it happened to me and it taught me that it’s not about the amount of work, it’s about how you work.”
While joining one of Europe’s biggest metal bands doesn’t seem like an obvious way of taking the pressure off, Floor admits the challenge of being in such a well established group helped in its own way.
“Anyone that has had this kind of a burnout will recognise that there’s a fear of doing things again and insecurity because everything you’ve done… the last time you’ve done all those things, you’ve done them sick,” she says.
“When I got asked [to join] Nightwish, it was such a no-brainer. Like, ‘Yes! This is a dream come true.’ That really helped me to replace the fear for absolute excitement, almost like the survival mode we went into the first days, where I really didn’t know the setlist that well.”
“I mean, I joined them in the middle of a North American tour. It was a crazy beginning! Maybe psychology will say it’s very unhealthy, but for me it was the best start,” she continues. “It was such a confirmation that I was in the right place. Like, ‘Of course, I need to sing and I need to perform and be out and doing this.’ It absolutely helped me back up in the saddle.”
Floor launched a solo career in 2023 with Paragon, and will be touring in 2027 in support of her new solo album Hytress, due for release on January 15, 2027 via Revamp Music and Warner. Her first UK headline show is set for the following day at Electric Brixton in London.
She first rose to prominence as the vocalist in Dutch symphonic metal group After Forever, before launching the band ReVamp in 2009 following After Forever’s disbandment.
Elsewhere in the interview, Floor discusses how she had to learn how to slow down and not overstimulate herself.
“It was a vital thing to learn for moving forward,” she explains. “What to avoid and what to do to charge your battery, how to respond to the earlier signals… There’s so many ways to get tired. We live in a fast world.”
“The pandemic showed it a lot. Everything was silent for a little while and at first it feels a little bit weird. You’re not used to that tempo, you’re not used to that silence. It’s super hard to go back into the tempo of the life we all once had. Like, ‘Did we really do it like this? Jesus, we must be superhumans!’ But we’re not. Our brains are still more developed to roam the plains and jump away in time from tigers and other predators than to live in the middle of London or Amsterdam staring at screens.”
Nightwish are set to release a greatest hits compilation titled The Greatest 30 Years On Earth on December 11, 2026 via Nuclear Blast. In an interview with Metal Hammer earlier this year frontman Tuomas Holopainen confirmed he had begun writing for the band’s next record, but would be working on a solo album of his own before that is likely to arrive.