Artist:Evanescence f/Paul McCoy
Song:Bring Me to Life
Album:Fallen
Fallen was the 2003 debut album for Evanescence. It was certified Diamond and sold 17M copies worldwide. The first single Bring Me to Life was a top five hit. It was all downhill from there. They are still around but Evanescence has never been able to repeat that level of success. Singer and pianist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody were teens when they met in 1994 at a Christian youth camp in Little Rock, AR. They started working on music at Amy's home and then played local coffeehouses. They were acoustic at this point. But what Amy wanted to do was mix hard rock and symphonic music. She was influenced by Danny Elfman's film scores. Of course she wanted to use real strings. But they didn't have the money for that so they used keyboards. They decided to call themselves Evanescence. They were still a duo. They hired musicians for shows and made a couple of EPs to sell at shows. They also sent a demo out to record companies. These were mastered at Ardent Studios in Memphis and someone there played it for Windup Records A&R head Diana Meltzer. They signed Evanescence and moved Amy and Moody to Los Angeles so they could record an album. Diana liked Amy's voice but wasn't sure what else to do with them. It makes me wonder why they didn't sign Amy as a solo artist. It took two years to record Fallen. It was produced by Ugly Kid Joe guitarist Dave Fortman. Windup was jittery about marketing a hard rock band with a female lead singer. so they wanted Amy and Moody to bring in a male singer to share vocals with Amy. When they refused, their contract was cancelled and Amy and Moody went home to Little Rock. A few weeks later, Amy agreed to a compromise. 12 Stones lead singer Paul McCoy was brought in for lead single Bring Me to Life. The song appeared on the soundtrack of the 2003 film Daredevil. Bring Me to Life reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. The third single My Immortal reached #7 Fallen was certified Diamond and sold 15M copies worldwide. The marketing sold Evanescence as "nu metal" with goth overtones. Amy Lee looked at herself as a singer songwriter with a big musical vision. Why was this such a big hit? Daredevil didn't hurt. That film was a big hit. Most listeners first heard Evanescence in the film. Of course the success didn't last. Moody wasn't getting along with Amy and left in Oct. 2003. So now it's her band. She brought in Cold guitarist Terry Balsamo for the 2005 album The Open Door. Meanwhile, Bring Me to Life won a Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy and Evanescence was nominated for Best New Artist. Amy and Balsamo wrote all the songs on The Open Door. The album just wasn't as successful as Fallen. And that's how it went for Evanescence. The first album was huge but they were never able to come close to repeating it. The band is still around. Windup sold their catalog to Concord in 2013. Evanescence is on BMG and their latest album was released in 2021. So Amy Lee still leads a version of Evanescence. But now they are mostly a nostalgia act. "Oh, remember that song? Whatever happened to them?". Here's the video for Bring Me to Life by Evanescence.
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