FLOOR jANSEN fangirls over Lzzy Hale (don’t we all?) in her Slaylist.
We got the Nightwish singer to pick us a playlist. But how did cheesy musicals lead to Pantera?
It Was the music of ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’s Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that got me into singing. I must have been 13 years old; my school announced that they were gonna do the musical, so I did an audition as the Narrator, and I got it! I didn’t know anything about musicals or singing back then, but I thought it was a nice thing to do. I could also pick It Must Have Been Love by ROXETTE or anything from that period. We used to play it in the car – I have memories of where my sister and I would sing along endlessly to it. Any song that’s vocally challenging – I really like that. My personal taste has evolved somewhat, but I have really strong memories of that stuff. SKUNK ANANSIE were also very big for me – when I heard Weak, with Skin singing with that strong voice. It was so powerful and very inspiring. When I started thinking that I could sing on a rock album, Skunk Anansie was a big part of that.
For me personally, Strange Machines by the GATHERING was huge. That was my step from listening to ‘pop rock’ bands into actually thinking, ‘I should be in a metal band!’ I never really felt that I need to sound like somebody; I don’t want to sound like Anneke [van Giersbergen], but she did really inspire me, and they had a huge influence on many bands that came later. But I don’t know if they actually ever got that recognition. I highly doubt it.
There were two metal bands that I started listening to at the same time – PANTERA and MACHINE HEAD. If I had to pick only one track for each, I’d say Walk and anything from Burn My Eyes – Davidian. I started listening to metal mainly through those two bands. There were others, but if there were any favourites I had, it was them. I might have first heard them through a friend who played it to me, but I just remembered the feeling of it all. I liked the groove, I liked the melody, I liked that it was aggressive but it wasn’t blastbeats all the time. Pantera and Machine Head are two bands that really got my interest in metal to grow.
I picked nightwish’s End Of All Hope because that album [Century Child, 2002] was the first time I started really getting into the band, and After Forever also started touring with them back then. Now, it’s the song Nightwish often open our Decades shows with, and it just sets the feel of what’s gonna happen. ‘OK, now we have something.’ It’s so dramatic and so full-on. I think it’s really, really mindblowing. Then I guess I also had to add Ghost Love Score as it’s my all-time favourite Nightwish song. It was and is the song to me takes you on a roadtrip through the genre of ‘gothic metal’, ‘female-fronted’, ‘symphonic’… whatever name it has or had. That song captures everything about that for me, so it has to be on this list! I picked symphony X – Evolution, The Grand Design from a vocalist standpoint. I think Russell Allen is the voice of modern metal. I came into metal somewhere in the 90s, so whatever happened before that I came into later. Dio and all the big names, I didn’t get into them in that time – I was already in love with Russell’s voice. If there was a way of singing that influenced me, it has to be him. And Symphony X have a lot of cool songs! I like proggy stuff, as long as I don’t have to listen to too many solos. Lzzy [Hale] from halestorm spiked that love that I have for rock and female voices. A lot of the voices in metal today don’t do it for me. I miss the power. But somebody sent me I Miss The Misery, and I played it, and she starts right off… ‘Wooooooah I miss the misery!’ Goosebumps all over. It’s fortunate that you can still get your mind blown in the modern era. Halestorm were playing a festival last year that Nightwish were headlining. I met Lzzy and I was like a fangirl. I took a photo with her and it’s on my Instagram!
DECADES IS OUT NOW VIA NUCLEAR BLAST. NIGHTWISH TOUR THE UK THIS MONTH
“I MISS THE POWER IN METAL SINGING”