More than two decades after “Bring Me To Life” rocketed Evanescence to global fame, Amy Lee is still unpacking the anxiety that came with it. In a new conversation with Tom Power, host of “Q” on Canada’s CBC Radio One, the singer revisited the label battle behind the band’s breakthrough single — and admitted her greatest worry was that the song’s runaway success could box the band in for good.
The group’s original label, Wind-up, threatened to shelve their 2003 debut Fallen unless a male voice was added to “Bring Me To Life” to make it more radio-friendly. That guest spot went to Paul McCoy of 12 Stones, and the finished track climbed to No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, became the band’s first U.K. No. 1, and got a major boost from its place on the soundtrack to the superhero film “Daredevil“.
Lee explained that the male vocal ran counter to everything the band was about. “Yeah, it was a label thing. Our music was never that. But we were coming up in a time where what was happening, what was trending was nu metal, which was dude driven. It was all guys. And then we had this sound that had similarities to that, obviously, in our music, but not with the vocal. And to me, honestly, that’s what made it special. One of the things about it that made it special was the fact that it didn’t sound like that in the vocal. It was a female voice for a change. But I think that typical industry head space is, like, we need a… I kept hearing this word, ‘point of entry’. There needs to be some familiar thing that somebody can grab on to and go, ‘Oh, it’s like the female Linkin Park.’ Or ‘it’s like the female this or that.’ And I just absolutely hated that. I was, like, ‘You’re watering it down. You’re cheapening it. You’re not being brave. You’re being scared,'” she said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
According to Lee, the standoff went far beyond a single song. The label had wanted the band to audition and hire a full-time rapper for the bulk of the record. “They wanted us to hold auditions and hire a rapper to be in the band for, like, 10 out of 12 songs… It was, like, ‘Change who you are.’ That’s why I was, like, ‘Absolutely not.’ So we went home, fought that fight, and then they came back about three weeks later, and they were, like, ‘Okay, great news. There’s this movie soundtrack, ‘Daredevil‘, and they love you. They want you in. They wanna use at least one, probably two songs. But there’s a catch. What we pitched to them is this thing with the rap in it for ‘Bring Me To Life‘, so you have to do it.’ And I was, like, ‘Could it at least be the second single?’ And they were, like, ‘No, absolutely not. It has to be the first single.’ And I was, like, ‘Okay. Well, then can it at least be, like, somebody super famous so that people understand who we are and that it’s a collab? It’s just gonna be confusing.'”
The freeze lasted about three weeks before the label came back with the “Daredevil” opportunity attached to a condition — the rap-featuring version of “Bring Me To Life” had to be the debut single. Lee pushed for it to at least be the second single, or for the guest to be a big name to make the collaboration clear, but the label held firm.
That’s where her deepest fear took hold. “My biggest fear was that we were gonna be a one-hit wonder, that people are gonna hear that one song that was different from everything else that we were ever gonna do next, and then they… It’s like a ‘bait and switch’. Then they would hear the rest of our music and be, like, ‘Oh, this is not what I thought it was.’ Like, ‘You lied.’ And they were, like, ‘We’ll do our best.’
Lee was quick to stress that McCoy himself was never the problem — quite the opposite. She noted that many of the famous artists the label approached for the part were advised against it by their teams, since a “chick-rock-band thing wasn’t gonna work.”
“Well, they all get on stage with us now. And it’s a great, beautiful, full circle, full show. But anyway, all that to say as much as I resisted, Paul McCoy from 12 Stones was on our record label. And they were, like, ‘Check out Paul.’ We were already friends. They were recording their album at the same time, and he came by, and he was great at it. And it always felt like a concession to me to have to do it at all, but it was, like, ‘If we have to do this, we’re gonna make it great. We’re gonna control it.’ I wrote the rap part. I remember Paul being so sweet and understanding and excited for us and pouring his heart into it. And then, of course, for years I’ve had to tell the story that I never get time to tell the end of, and it makes him sound like the bad guy. He was absolutely a hero in the story to make it as positive of an experience as it possibly could have been for me. And then we overcame it. The whole thing was, ‘You just have to do it for this one song.’ I was, like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make this one song really great.’ And it definitely flew higher than anybody expected it to. And we did release another song and another song that were fortunately also understood, accepted and embraced. So there we are.”
She also pointed to the film-soundtrack context as part of why audiences accepted the unusual duet. “I think generally when you’re doing something for a film, there’s a little bit of a license for it to be kind of different ’cause it’s fitting the film. And the thing about this film was the scene where the two are fighting… Well, it’s like Elektra and Daredevil are fighting each other. So it’s, like, ‘Oh, the dude’s voice and the girl. Okay, that makes sense.'”
In the end, of course, the gamble paid off many times over. “Bring Me To Life” far outstripped expectations — the single has since been certified Diamond (11x Platinum) in the U.S., and its music video has surpassed a billion views on YouTube — and, crucially for Lee, the follow-up singles landed too, proving the band was no fluke.
