Amy Lee became sublime the moment she stepped barefoot out of a window, to precariously scale a tall building as the wind howled. The “Bring Me to Life” video all leads to her, a figure somehow both Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas and goth Ophelia in a nightgown, slipping from the ledge because a man has thrown open a window. Holding on by her fingertips, she hangs there, as he steps out in baggy jeans and not one but two thick chain and padlock necklaces, and delivers the most iconic rock-rap since Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix told us he’d reached his last resort in 2000.
Evanescence is the band everyone in their 20s and 30s remembers for their 2003 debut album, Fallen—the cover was a close-up shot of Lee’s face in electric blue and black. It reached number one in the UK album charts and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Since all their songs are essentially the Swedish songwriter Max Martin pop bangers with disgusting nu-metal riffs, they appealed to every punk kid with access to MTV. While they might have only kept the rock following—I still listen to Evanescence and love doing the previously mentioned man rap at karaoke—after nu-metal and emo fell out of fashion, their later albums have been just as haunting.
Ahead of their double headline show in London recently (which featured Lee wearing a cape of feathers and playing a grand piano), I drank as much of the free coffee as I could, waiting for her at her label’s office and then got jittery when she floated in wearing a huge dress, wearing the same electric blue and black as the Fallen cover.