19 years ago Fallen was released. Happy World Evanescence Day!
During an appearance on the “Hardcore Humanism” podcast, EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee reflected on the losses of two of her siblings, sister Bonnie and brother Robby. Bonnie died in 1987 at the age of three from an undisclosed illness, while Robby passed away in 2018 after struggling with severe epilepsy for most of his life.
Speaking about her approach to understanding “darkness” and “light” in her life, Amy told podcast host Michael Friedman Ph.D. (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I’ve been through some stuff in my life. I lost my sister when I was six, and then, in a completely different world, so many years later and in a totally different situation, I lost my brother, just in 2018. It’s like when the worst possible thing that you could ever fear comes true. I’ve seen the moments when that can happen. And I’m not alone in that. To me, going through that, surviving that, being able to continue on and find a way to make your life make sense afterward, that’s really what I’m talking about. It’s not that I like spooky things and darkness because it’s fun to play with danger. It’s that the time that I feel the most afraid or alone or whatever in my life is when it’s like it didn’t happen. It’s like the world just went on living like nothing ever went wrong.
“I remember sometimes feeling really weird on beautiful, sunny days when I was a kid, because I felt like it should always be raining when I was grieving my sister,” she continued. “It’s kind of the same thing. To be able to talk about it, to be able to admit it, to be able to face it and say, ‘Okay, it hurts this much, and I’m thinking about this stuff.’ To be able to spill my guts is the thing that makes it better, and especially to be able to share it with other people. That’s why music started for me in the first place. Processing the biggest wounds and the biggest challenges that I’ve been through in my life and in my heart, being able to make that into music that I love, and then, in turn, the even greater gift is to be able to see other love that music and have it speak to them on a level where they feel that it’s doing something good for them to not feel alone in that moment too is such a blessing — something so healthy and so good. I think it’s important to face the darkness, because it’s real — it’s really there — and if we can’t face it, then we’re just living a lie and letting that stuff bubble under the surface.”
Lee also talked about how what she feared most was not letting go of the pain of loss of her two siblings, but rather forgetting the pain of loss. In this way, Lee felt that letting go of darkness would undermine her ability to feel connected to her authentic self.
“I don’t wanna move past [the loss of my sister and brother],” she said. “I will always be their sister. So on a level, I feel like the thing about it is it’s not that I’m ever gonna get over it. It’s not that I ever want to completely get over it, because I’m never gonna let them go. They’re always gonna be with me — really, literally — and part of that is the feeling of pain of losing them because I still love them so much. But the other part of it is laughing at memories and remembering the fun that we have too. I don’t wanna just remember the people that I lost by their death. I wanna remember their life. I wanna remember our time.
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Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee has one of the most powerful voices in music. But it took a long time for her to feel comfortable using it.
“I’ve got to be honest, that came after I’d been doing it for a while,” she tells EW. “I was pretty insecure in the beginning; I always felt like I wasn’t that good. I started playing music with people in what eventually turned into a band when I was 13, and I was singing only because it was the vehicle for the poetry I used to write.”
Lee laughs as she reflects on being a “wannabe dramatic 11-, 12-, 13-year-old” who poured all of her emotions into those poems — along with her original dream of becoming the next Mozart. “I wanted to write genius symphonic opuses and impress everyone with my skills that I didn’t have,” she says. “I was kind of halfway down the path of realizing that that would be an extreme challenge when grunge hit and I started playing with boys in bands.”
Yet she credits joining choir in junior high as a major factor in her becoming a singer, a role she initially saw as “blending in” rather than standing out. It wasn’t until she realized how much people liked her voice that she gained the necessary confidence to bare her soul on her own. “The more I did it, the more positive attention I received,” she says, adding with a chuckle, “Ugh that feels so weird and insecure to say it that way! I don’t feel that way now.” [READ MORE]
It sold 17 million copies and scooped two GRAMMY awards, but it was the personal impact that Fallen made on the band’s fans that positioned Evanescence above the alt.rock pack, elevating the Arkansas gang to superstardom. On the 18th anniversary of the record’s release, we’ve handed the keys of Kerrang! over to The Noise Cartel publicist Donnay Clancy, to tell just one of those 17 million stories and explain what made Fallen so special… [READ MORE]
