It was just announced today that my favorite vocalist, Floor Jansen, has been permanently added to Nightwish's line-up. Her previous bands wrote great lyrics, but mediocre music. On the other hand, I've always felt that Nightwish wrote great music and good lyrics, but had mediocre vocalists. This is a perfect match. I can't wait to see what they'll be able to create together.
/happy
Trying to find youtube videos of the live concerts from the Imaginaerum tour to get a feel for her vocals, but all of the sound quality is bad. From what I can hear, though, is that Floor has a more powerful voice than Anette (which wasn't hard) and yet is more adaptable that Tarja's (which was set in opera stone). This means that they'll be able to do stuff similar to pre-Dark Passion Play but they'll also probably be able to do things like Dark Passion Play (which is my favorite album). I never bothered with caring about who the better singer was or lamenting the loss of the singers because Toumas is the heart and soul of Nightwish and explores new territory, playing to the strengths of the band. There will be good music regardless of the vocalist. There might be some hits or misses, but there will definitely be good music.
Floor's addition to the band gives me hope of seeing more stuff like DPP and more of the best of the older stuff, though, so I'm happy about that.
I felt that Tarja did fine with the operatic style vocals, but completely lacked expression. She felt rigid and technical. No passion.
Anette felt like she brought expressiveness and passion, but her vocal style and quality was about as unremarkable as possible.
Floor can not only match both styles, but flow from one to the other while hanging on a single note (
proof in the last word of this song - my favorite vocal performance of hers). There aren't many good bootleg recordings from Imaginaerium, so here's my selection of a few more favorites that I think show off her talents best.
Beautiful Emptiness (just the way she spits the word "disgust" with such conviction is amazing)
Intrinsic (she hits an absolutely ridiculous note at the end of this one)
EvokeEnergize MeEmphasisand of course,
the Showtime, Storytime trailer does a pretty damn good job, too -- chills! Seriously, how many singers can sound like that live?