During a conversation with Metal Hammer, NIGHTWISH vocalist Floor Jansen talked about “getting sh*t” from the audience as a female musician.
She said about the time spent in her pre-NIGHTWISH band AFTER FOREVER:
“I’d get sh*t from the audience all the time. ‘Oh look, there’s a woman up there.’ In the beginning, I thought it was just part of it. But it soon became, ‘Really?’
“They’d either be screaming ‘SLAYER!’ or ‘Boobs!’ ‘OK, we’re not Slayer and I have boobs – very perceptive of you, can we move on now?’
“This guy was just constantly shouting stupid stuff at me: *imitates Beavis and Butthead voice ‘Uh, boobs!’ This guy would not shut up. Eventually, I just said: ‘Seeing as you have such a big mouth on you, why don’t you come and tell me all these things to my face after the show?’
“Yeah, I picked a fight with that guy from the stage. It worked like a charm. He didn’t say another word. If you want to be that stupid, by all means, do it. But you don’t deserve my attention.”
During the rest of the interview, Floor addressed people who think NIGHTWISH recently took time off because of her pregnancy, saying:
“I think a lot of people think I had the year off because of my pregnancy. But the pregnancy was because we had a year off. That’s a very important order. … It wasn’t a point where I thought, ‘Yeah, let’s have a break.’ It was more like, ‘Oh sh*t…'”
Jansen also remembered posting a letter via social media in 2014, in response to criticism of how she dealt with fans, insisting she is “not an arrogant bitch.” She said:
“That upset me terribly, just having to write it. Because I felt so misunderstood. But I stand by it. People think that when they come up to me, screaming things into my ear, that I will respond according to what they want.
“I’ll turn around and smile and take the photo. But I’m not somebody’s marionette. Just because I sing in a band, people don’t get to dictate whatever the f*ck they want from me.”
Floor also discussed the struggles she went through her teenage years, saying:
“I was tall, and I was teased for it for a long time. There was serious bullying for many years. It was not nice. I was a loner for a long time. I only had one or two friends.”
