‘Paragon’ Album Review: Floor Jansen Sets Alight The Dark

“I won’t give up just yet / Gotta lose sometimes to gain,” sings Dutch singer-songwriter Floor Jansen on her debut album “Paragon,” released on March 24. Best known as the frontwoman of the Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, Jansen began releasing solo tracks in 2020 during the darkest days of the pandemic.

Accordingly, a thematic thread of resilience and hope runs through the album. On “Paragon,” Jansen explores and creates her sound as a soloist, veering into the realm of pop without losing her metal and classical roots. Full of empowering, therapeutic songs that showcase her vocal versatility and unique sound, “Paragon” is an exciting debut that leaves fans with much to anticipate for her future releases.

In an interview with FaceCulture, Jansen spoke about developing her sound as a soloist apart from the metal bands she has sung for. Still, many songs contain symphonic and metal instrumentation beneath their pop formula. The jazzy and mysterious “Me Without You” feels even more experimental than the rest of the songs, but all of them are genre blends in some way — a truly refreshing contribution to the current pop industry.

On “Paragon,” Jansen blends vocal techniques as seamlessly as genres. As an operatically trained soprano with a range of almost four octaves who’s a master at belting and death growls, Jansen is already known for being an extremely versatile singer in the metal scene. Yet switching to pop singing proved to be far from effortless.

The main vocal challenge was to “make it sound open and strong without actually opening all the way” , she explained to [the media page] FaceCulture, because less is more in pop whereas more is often more in metal. But as expected, Jansen has now also mastered this style of singing. “Fire,” her cinematic debut single, showcases this new side of her voice through a dramatic, yet refined build-up that allows her to open up vocally in the end.

Similarly, pop songs are more limited in other formal aspects: In contrast to Nightwish tracks, they aren’t usually 10 minutes long and also tend not to employ complex, classical-inspired harmonies. Again, “Fire” encapsulates her new approach to songwriting and genre: Although it doesn’t contain crazy harmonic changes, it ranges from a slow, ballad-like beginning over a choral interlude to powerful belting, and it is this variety that makes her songs interesting.

It also epitomizes one of the main themes of “Paragon” — resilience — by way of fire being a “metaphor for coming back to life, back into our world outside of our little houses and sofas” after the pandemic, she stated in another interview with FaceCulture in 2022. The song starts with dejected lyrics: “Muted are the days, we lost our will / Frozen in a whirlwind that stands still / Time itself is silent, the silence… / Longing for some warmth back on our face / Find a way to get out of this maze / Scream away the silent, the silence.” As the song slowly starts to soar vocally and instrumentally, Jansen “set[s] alight the dark” in the chorus to “burn the silence down / Let the fire out.”

“Storm” is another impeccable song that captures her formula of slow build-ups and style blends. In the song’s Genius annotations, she stated that “it became a guideline of [her] solo sound.” It begins as a wistful ballad with sparse instrumentation as she sings, “I won’t give up just yet / Gotta lose sometimes to gain / To the whole wide world I’ll say / Gonna make it to the end.” The chorus, especially in the end, gives her powerful voice room to open up, supported by dramatic symphonic instrumentals: “You’re gonna hear my voice roar / Like thunder.” Lyrically, the song explores themes of self-acceptance and dreaming big, of “finding power in saying ‘I am that storm’ with all its imperfections and chaos,” she said in the interview with FaceCulture.

The album’s lyrics seem quite personal to Jansen, as many listeners have pointed out that they might, in addition to the pandemic, also refer to her recent cancer diagnosis (fortunately, she has since undergone treatment and is cancer-free as of last year). However, she has explained that all of the songs were written before her diagnosis and she used to see them more from a mental health perspective, yet she now sings them “really different, from a much more personal perspective as when I wrote the song[s] because then I thought of other people and now I think of me when I sing [them].”

In addition, she sees sharing the difficult moments of her life as a way to empower others by showing on social media that no one’s life is perfect: “More and more of this openness and awareness is seeping through the cracks of the fake and the polished, shiny, and I think that’s super important.”

This openness about her struggles is always accompanied by a positive approach to dealing with them, as all of the songs are life-affirming and hopeful. On the upbeat title track “My Paragon,” Jansen focuses on the good in life by counting her blessings: “There are so many things that I dreamt of, that I made come true,” she stated. In the music video, Jansen hangs out with her childhood and teenager selves, as she lyrically looks into the future (“One day I will be, oh oh / One day I will reach it all / One day is a dream, oh oh”) before coming back to the present moment and realizing that “One day is today / I’m already there.”

—Staff writer Larissa G. Barth can be reached at larissa.barth@thecrimson.com.