For those of you that are new to my MidNight Gems series. Welcome to this nightly trip on which we will uncover & recover some amazing songs & covers.
I guess I do not have to mention I am a big fan of Floortje ;) as there have been many songs in the previous 65 Midnight Gems sessions....
But this is another one I had lying around on my virtual shelf. This one I wrote when her first solo song just premiered. But as I plan to do another story on Floor Tomorrow I just wanted to share this with you all before tomorrow's post.
I was 19 minutes late for the party, but it was a great party! Also, the live video was very much fun to watch, and all because of this next song.
Floor Jansen - Fire (Official Music Video)
Now we all know that After Forever was the Key to Floors' initial success and being a huge Therion fan those day´s I considered After Forever as the little wannabe Sister. Over time that changed a little, but still many AF songs had a bit of everything Goth Metal and except for Floor no real own identity. Although this next one was and will remain a personal favorite...maybe you can hear why.
After Forever - The Key
Now in all honesty I never knew about her time with revamp, but actually, it was fun to listen through their songs on their YouTube Channel and see the band experimenting with so many different styles of ROCK. I almost settled for Sweet Curse which nicely mixes Power & Goth Metal but this next one has 27 seconds which made this song an instant classic (from 02:00 till 02:27).
ReVamp - The Trial of Monsters
So runner-up to Therion always has been Nightwish....but who would have thought that our Floor would one day be the lead singer of this epic band??? The first album Floor appeared on was Endless forms' most beautiful. That album contains the Folk metal song my Walden which is probably my fav song on the album due to being just a little different.
Nightwish - My Walden
The story of this next song is as Epic as the song itself;
The song is about Eugene Shoemaker a geologist and one of the founders of modern planetary science. He studied craters on Earth and Moon, and realized that they were created by asteroid impacts.
He was working on, and was supposed to join the Apollo Missions until he was diagnosed with Addison's disease. He commented once, "Not going to the Moon and banging on it with my own hammer has been the biggest disappointment in life."
But after dying in a car crash his urn was planted on the moon in the Shoemaker crater by the Lunar Prospector space probe.
His urn was inscribed with a quotation from Romeo and Juliet reading: "And when he shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun."
This made Shoemaker the only human buried on a celestial body other than Earth.
NIGHTWISH - Shoemaker
Now prior to releasing her first solo song Floor has done a lot of covers .... and you know how I love cover, so let´s do some amazing Floor covers like this one. The band is the band from the Dutch Program Beste Zangers which finally introduced Floor to the Dutch audience. But the song was never part of the program, still it´s in my top 3 of great covers done by floor.
The Marcel Fisser Band & Floor Jansen - Euphoria
Call me a little baby....but I love Disney Movies and even more when Floor starts covering this classic Disney Song:
Let It Go - Frozen
But truly the best thing coming from Beste Zangers was this next Colab, I know I shilled it already once....but that doesn´t mean I shouldn´t do so again.
Henk Poort is the Opera dude of The Netherlands, but I am more into Metal Opera and this next song just nails that.
Sing for me Floor, my angel of music:
Floor Jansen & Henk Poort - Phantom Of The Opera | Beste Zangers
Floor has already done a lot and with a voice like hers, Metal Opera is the best place to be if you would ask me. Timo Tolkki, former STRATOVARIUS created the Avalon Metal Opera in 2021, and look who this godfather of Power Metal selected to make his work sound epic.
Timo Tolkki's Avalon ft. Floor Jansen - "Design the Century"
I know we are at the end of this trip, and very few of you speak Dutch....but I secretly hope that one day Floor will do a solo project in Dutch and it sounds like this. The original song by Stef Bos was already amazing....but damn this one goes above and beyond.
Floor Jansen - Is Dit Nou Later - Stef Bos cover
YouTube Full Playlist
Now you can find the playlists I create also created on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXQdG71WNB5WfDEJTrQpeaKfMpHuOtLYP
What the fluff are midnight gems?
Somewhere lost in time, trying to escape out of the rabbit hole back into the rat race there is a vacuum..... that´s the place where midnight gems are found.
My Midnight Gems will try to uncover & recover those beautiful songs that nobody ever noticed or might have been forgotten.
Who the fluff am I?
Being a former DJ playing about everything and having an uncompleted study of radio journalism. I have been wanting to do this for years....Thought about it many nights and guess now it´s time to finally take it to the streets.
Hope you enjoyed this Special Edtion of Midnight Gems, if so please hit the like button as it´s one of the few free things in life.