EVANESCENCE’s AMY LEE Opens Up About Her Mixed Feelings For “Everybody’s Fool”

Evanescence is currently basking in the glory of two decades since the release of their breakthrough album Fallen, and as usual, with the celebration, some details about the album have come to light. In a recent exclusive interview with Kerrang!, the band’s frontwoman and leader, Amy Lee, opened up about the mixed emotions she harbors for one of the album’s tracks: “Everybody’s Fool.”

Lee admitted that the song’s lyrics reflect her youthful perspective, something she no longer fully identifies with. “It’s just the way it sounds when you read the lyrics,” she explained. “I was talking about high school and talking to, more than anything, my little sisters.”

The singer recalled her frustration with the pop culture influences that had captivated her younger siblings. “I was like, ‘Guys, that is not what’s cool, it’s not about what’s on the surface – that’s superficial, it’s about what’s in your heart,'” she shared.

Lee acknowledged that the song’s message of superficiality stemmed from her own experiences in the spotlight. “‘Everybody’s Fool’ started off from watching them and me being like, ‘Why are you idolizing something that’s fake?'” she explained. “I don’t like the way that it’s phrased.”

To reconcile her feelings, Lee decided to reinterpret the song’s meaning during the music video production. “When we did the video, I made it like it was about me,” she revealed. “I could relate to the way people see you on the big stage being very different to who you really are, and that’s not necessarily being what you wanted to be.”

Despite her reservations about the song’s original message, Lee emphasized that she doesn’t harbor any animosity towards “Everybody’s Fool.” “I don’t have any song that I’ve put out that I hate,” she affirmed. “It’s just that I’ve grown out of it a little bit.”

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Evanescence

Amy Lee Confirms New Album Material for Evanescence

Big week for emos everywhere, as Evanescence’s Amy Lee has confirmed that a brand new single titled “Afterlife” and its accompanying lyric video will be released this Friday. That bit of news comes along with the reveal that she’s also working on some new material for an upcoming Evanescence album.

“Afterlife” is a new single co-written by Lee and composer Alex Seave. The track will feature in the new Netflix Japanese anime series based on the hit video game franchise Devil May Cry — joining Lee’s captivating vocal delivery with an enchanting otherworldly visual style.

In an interview with Audacy Music, Lee discussed more about this new release and how it came together and how it relates to new material for Evanescence.

“[We are] very excited to have new music. This is the first of many [new tracks]. We are working on a lot of songs right now for the new album, but this came up through Netflix, and we were just really excited to have an excuse to get in there right away.”

In 2023, Evanescence shared a remix/remaster of their critically acclaimed debut studio album, Fallen, in celebration of its 20th anniversary. It’s been four years since the music industry has heard a new full-length project from Evanescence, so this news surely comes with plenty excitement for fans.

Although new Evanescence material is officially on the cards, Lee urges that they “don’t have a date for you. We are just working. We got off the road in November or something, and we’ve been just creative.” [SOURCE]

Amy Lee • Evanescence

THE MOST TRAGIC LOSSES THAT CHANGED AMY LEE

Amy Lee didn’t dream of being a rock star as a young girl. Her earliest musical influences came from the classical world. She was fascinated by her grandmother’s piano playing and the film “Amadeus,” and she dreamed of one day being either a classical composer or scoring films, as she told Kerrang!. Even when she discovered grunge and heavy metal as a teenager and started down the path to becoming the leader of Evanescence, Lee made connections between heavy metal and the classical writers she knew.

Still, she made the transition into rock and grunge, though she didn’t at first think of herself as a singer. Vocal performance was initially only an outlet for her poetry. For her poems, Lee drew on a darker muse than a classic film or her grandmother’s talents. When she was only 6 years old, Lee’s younger sister Bonnie died of an illness that left her physicians baffled. Lee was close to her sister and was devastated by losing her, but she didn’t want to compound her parents’ grief by showing her feelings. Poetry, and later music, became her outlet.

Lee carried that early sense of loss into her career with Evanescence. She’s identified two songs, “Hello” from the album “Fallen” and “Like You” from “The Open Door” as being about her sister. She’s also come close to tears discussing her sister in interviews and long declined to share her name, out of concern it would upset her parents or lead overcurious fans to encroach on her sister’s grave.

Evanescence

Evanescence’s 2021 plans

As Evanescence gear up to unveil their long-awaited new album The Bitter Truth this year, Amy Lee tells Kerrang! that she’s doing everything she can to make the record as a whole an absolute must-have for fans.

“Right now I’m just wanting to make the package and all the extras, everything the fans could ever want and more while there’s still time to add things to it,” she reveals cryptically. When asked about the details, Amy adds, “The only reason I’m not being more specific is because I don’t want to fail and be like, ‘Oh, sorry, I tried to be that awesome thing I said, but I didn’t have enough content.’ I’m just trying to make something almost like an audio making of moment.

“There’s so much that goes into this whole process. I’ve got so many little pieces of audio. There’s tons of stuff that didn’t get used. It started with the voice notes because that’s how I write vocals a lot nowadays. I just have hundreds of those. If you were just to listen to those all in a row, I feel like that would be very boring after a while. I have a lot that are like eight seconds. So it’s like, ‘Oh, cool, that’s the melody of Wasted On You.’ There’s just a bunch of extra stuff. And I’m not positive what the limit of that is yet. I haven’t decided but I’m just collecting as much stuff as I can. So let’s see what can happen here!” [READ MORE]

Evanescence

Amy Lee Talks ‘The Bitter Truth’ Album, ‘Yeah Right’ Single

During a recent chat with Kerrang!, EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee was asked if the band’s latest single “Yeah Right” was a good indication of the kind of “curveballs” fans can expect from the band’s upcoming album “The Bitter Truth”. She responded: “I think there’s definitely more where that came from…

“When making a complete album, especially after all this time, I always want to just put out a statement, like, ‘This is where we’re at, this is who we are’ — it has to be a whole spectrum of emotions and reflections that make up who you are, who the band is,” she continued. “So far, I feel like each song that we put out is a very different colour of the spectrum and there are more colors yet to come, for sure.”

Regarding the most recent single, Amy said: “‘Yeah Right’ has been a long time coming; I started that song a decade ago. It was mostly there, it had been at the top of the pile for a really, really long time. We’ve always had a cool pile of extra scraps and pieces of unfinished songs. That’s just one that kept on not plugging in, and then something happened this year when we got together and started playing and pulling songs together in pre-production — I was, like, ‘I finally know how we can make it work!’ It’s one of those songs that we’re going to have to figure out how to do live because I don’t want to be glued to the Moog the whole time. It might be a good time to whip out the keytar.” [READ MORE]

Amy Lee

Evanescence’s Amy Lee Gets Back to Life

Amy Lee misses Brooklyn. She lived there for 12 years with her husband (and later their son, born in 2015), before they left their apartment for Nashville a year ago.

“The perfect year,” she says with an eye roll over Zoom. Lee had hoped to be closer to her family in Arkansas and friends in Nashville when she moved, only to find herself stuck at home with the rest of the world. “We haven’t gotten [to see people] as much as we would have liked to because of Covid, but now we are here, and we will be set up for a better next year,” she adds optimistically.

That’s not the only plan she’s had to readjust: Earlier this year, her alt-metal band, Evanescence, returned to the studio with producer Nick Raskulinecz, writing and recording songs for what will be their first album of new material since 2011’s Evanescence. While the pandemic slowed them down, the group has forged onward, working remotely at first and later, after getting negative Covid tests, at a Nashville studio. In April, they released the sobering power ballad “Wasted on You” as the lead single from their very much in-progress LP, The Bitter Truth, which is due to be released in early 2021. [READ MORE]

Evanescence

Amy Lee Talks ‘Wasted On You’ & New Album ‘The Bitter Truth’

Rock Sound Rock Sound chat via Zoom with Evanescence vocalist Amy Lee as the band release their new single ‘Wasted On You’. Amy tells us how that song came together and what it was like filming the music video on iPhones while the band stayed in quarantine. Also, we get some early details on their upcoming new album ‘The Bitter Truth’ which is due for release later in 2020. Plus, Amy tells us what she learned from the band’s incredible ‘Synthesis’ project which saw them rework classic songs like ‘My Immortal’ and ‘Bring Me To Life’ with new instrumentation and perform live with a full orchestra.

Evanescence

Amy Lee ‘blown away’ by Scottish fanbase

Amy Lee admits she is still blown away by her fanbase in Scotland after nearly 20 years of touring the world. The rocker, 37, will return to her favourite country next year alongside fellow big-hitters Within Temptation as part of a blockbuster partnership. And the Bring Me To Life and My Immortal singer admits she still gets goosebumps any time she gets on a Scottish stage. [Read Entire Article]

Amy Lee

“We Instantly Connected in a Beautiful Way”

Read the full feature on @KerrangMagazine here: https://t.co/WNqZATdqZH pic.twitter.com/8E271KvGom

— Evanescence (@evanescence) October 10, 2019

Amy Lee

Beyond the Boys’ Club: Amy Lee of Evanescence

Beyond the Boys’ Club is a monthly column from journalist and radio host Anne Erickson, focusing on women in rock and metal music, as they offer their perspectives on the music industry and discuss their personal experiences. This month’s piece features an interview with Amy Lee of Evanescence.

There’s no denying that Evanescence were a game changer. When Amy Lee and company came on the scene in the early 2000s, it was a time when mainstream and active rock radio had nothing but male artists on the charts. Evanescence found themselves an anomaly alongside bands such as Limp Bizkit, Creed, and others on the active-rock radio airwaves.

Fast-forward to today, and mainstream rock radio plays a bevy of female-fronted bands, from In This Moment to Halestorm to The Pretty Reckless.

It’s safe to say Evanescence played a large part in mainstream-rock radio opening its mind to playing a female voice on the airwaves, although Lee is humble about it.

“It’s hard to really take credit, because for me, there were a lot of women that came before me,” Lee tells Heavy Consequence. “There’s Shirley Manson — there were some powerful women in my sphere in the ‘90s and the alternative era that we’re killing it. Gwen Stefani, too.”

“It’s not like I was the first-first, but to go into that active-rock space and be able to break through like we did, I did see that it was special.”

Lee spoke with Heavy Consequence for the latest Beyond the Boys’ Club column, discussing the obstacles she faced early on in her career, the rise of women in hard rock and metal over the years, her recent experience touring with a full orchestra, new Evanescence music, and more. [Full Article]

Evanescence

Evanescence Rocked This Year’s MMRBQ

.@evanescence rocked this year’s #MMRBQ, but did you know they were also part of the very first 'RBQ back in 2007? Time flies!

Hear @AmyLeeEV chat with @brentporche and @radio_sara backstage at the show: https://t.co/2it8rut9dO pic.twitter.com/DFI9rgUZEj

— 93.3 WMMR (@933WMMR) May 21, 2019

Amy Lee

Amy’s interview with SiriusXM

🚨@evanescence frontwoman @AmyLeeEV gave us a status update on when we can expect a new album from the band. pic.twitter.com/BpLy0i7c83

— SiriusXM (@SIRIUSXM) May 14, 2019

Amy Lee

Amy Lee: the albums that changed my life

Taking cues from the worlds of classical and metal, Evanescence have always been a unique property amongst the early-noughties explosion of bands. But what records are responsible for changing the life and music of frontwoman Amy Lee? Let’s find out.

The first album I ever bought was…

The California Raisins– The California Raisins Sing The Hit Songs (1987)
“The California Raisins! Ha ha! It’s claymation raisins doing cover songs of The Four Tops etc. It was a big thing in the ‘80s and I was five years old. I must be the first person to ever be talking about The California Raisins in Metal Hammer.”

The album I wish I’d made is…

Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral (1994)
“That’s a hard question! Oh man, The Downward Spiral. I want so many things out of music, but if that was my record… I could sing that whole thing and be very happy. I have all of NIN’s records, but …Downward Spiral is my favourite.”

The album that broke my heart is…

Björk – Vespertine (2001)
“Vespertine by Björk. It’s really eerie and mellow and it has pagan poetry on it. There are a couple of songs on there that are so beautiful and are, to me anyway, about letting go and accepting things in a really beautiful and kinda sad way.”

You can read the full article at [here].

Evanescence

Evanescence confirm new, back-to-their-roots music!

Evanescence have confirmed new music for 2019. The band additionally say that their forthcoming release will be a follow-up to 2011’s self-titled record.

According to an interview with 93.3 WMMR Rocks!, frontwoman Amy Lee says that her and the rest of the band are all on board to go back to their roots.

“We all really wanna do it,” Lee says. “And it’s not one of those things where it’s, like, ‘Someday, maybe we’ll do something again.’ Everybody’s on board, and we’re getting together to do a few shows next year in [the self-titled] style — partially because I think it’ll be good for us to get back to that root, just get back to playing Evanescence-style rock and roll and just jive together again.”

Lee says that the band has no large touring plans next year. Other than a few shows, Lee wants to be able to have the time to flush out new ideas.

Lee continues to explain how the majority of the time spent with her band is composed of remembering and practicing their already-recorded discography for large tours. However, she says that they are always constantly inspired by one another. Lee says that within the next year, she is excited to carry out those inspirations with new music. [Source]

Evanescence

Amy Lee talks about next USA tour and new music!

Evanescence is part of the stacked lineup for next year’s MMRBQ! Amy Lee is ready to transition from the band’s orchestral performances back to a hard rock set. Is new music on the horizon for Evanescence? Will their next release be a traditional album, or a series of singles, or something entirely new? Hear it all in her conversation with Sara on MMR.

Amy Lee

Being a Rock Star and Mom: ‘I Always Thought It Was One or the Other’

Amy Lee is enjoying her work-life synthesis of music and motherhood.

This summer, the Evanescence rocker has been on the road promoting the band’s latest release, Synthesis, on which the act revamped their hits with orchestral and EDM twists.

And the co-headlining tour with Lindsey Stirling has been a family affair for Lee, whose husband, Josh Hartzler, and their 4-year-old son, Jack, have joined her on the road.

“I feel really grateful that I’m able to do both and not have to stop making music and being who I am to be a mom,” Lee, 36, tells PEOPLE.

“I think when I was a lot younger, I always thought it was one or the other: You are either fully focused working your butt off on your art, or you’re a mom and you don’t have time for that anymore,” she says. “And actually, now that I’m in it, I realize that it’s super important that I keep being who I am.” Read Full Story Here

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Evanescence

Amy on what’s next “We’ll start writing next year for the next full album”

Evanescence’s Amy Lee has been fulfilling a creative passion over the past year, first releasing the Synthesis album including reimagined orchestral versions of the band’s music and then taking their show on the road with orchestral backing. Earlier this summer, Evanescence kicked off a co-headline tour with Lindsey Stirling.

Loudwire spoke with Lee about the tour, Stirling and opening act Cellogram, and the unique Ozzy Osbourne-Sia show-closing mashup. Lee also spoke about Evanescence’s future plans, which includes a loose timeline to start their next album.

Evanescence

Six Facts About Evanescence’s Co-Headlining Tour With Lindsey Stirling

Since Evanescence released its multiplatinum debut, Fallen, in 2003, band leader Amy Lee has taken her time in crafting successive albums. Her determination to make quality-driven music has resulted in a limited studio output that includes 2006’s The Open Door and 2011’s Evanescence. It’s a risky approach, but it doesn’t stress her too much.

“I really don’t worry about it. Maybe that sounds crazy, but I feel like too much emphasis is put on the time and maybe not enough on the products,” says the songwriter-performer. “I just want to make something great. If I can’t make something awesome that I’m not ready for or don’t believe in … I won’t make it.”

The dedication of Evanescence’s followers lets her take whatever time she thinks is necessary. “Our fan base has proven to me that it doesn’t really matter how long how it takes. They keep coming back. It’s such a beautiful thing. I hope that continues.”

So when the band dropped 2017’s Synthesis, it was a surprise that instead of delivering all original music, Lee had reconstructed material from the aforementioned albums with an orchestra. After introducing Synthesis with new track “Imperfection,” Evanescence launched a North American tour that ran October-December to support the project. To do it justice, a full orchestra backs the quartet. The run has been captured for the upcoming Synthesis Live CD/DVD that’s due Oct. 12 on Eagle Vision. Lee calls the experience so far “extremely educational and interesting.” [Source]

Evanescence

Lindsey Stirling, Amy Lee, Evanescence tour: We ‘lift each other’

From upi.com: Violinist and dancer Lindsey Stirling said touring with Amy Lee and Evanescence offers an important message about how the best way to empower women is for them to support each other.

“Rather than waiting for everybody to let us into those offices, we’re going to be the ones to lift each other,” Stirling said, adding she is interested in composing music with other women and chose to go on tour with Evanescence, in part, because it is led by a woman.

The artists will perform their own concerts with various live orchestras throughout the country and will also make guest appearances in each other’s sets. A female conductor has also been employed for their upcoming road show.

Stirling and Lee told UPI they have been fans of each other’s work for years and are excited to tour together this summer.

“What I really love about Lindsey the most is I feel like she created her own genre,” Lee, 36, said recently during a Live Nation press day in New York. “I don’t know of another person who has gone out as an instrumentalist, like a violinist, and had this amazing, mainstream presence.”

“I have been a huge Amy fan, huge Evanescence fan. When I heard ‘Bring Me to Life’ for the first time, I was just so struck by the contrast in the music,” said Stirling, 31. “When I started to create my own music, I wanted to have that same contrast in my music, this light versus dark and this edgy versus smooth and soaring.”

Stirling — who is famous for viral videos such as “Crystallize” and “Shadows” — said she doesn’t expect the inspiration she draws from Lee to fade now that they are working together.

“I think that is really a unique story for me to get to tell as I enter the stage every night. Hey, I never would have expected as a teenager that I would one day get to share the stage with my idol. And to be like: ‘Guys, dream it, believe it, see it. Because it could happen.'”

Lee said she is thrilled and a little anxious about performing Evanescence songs such as “My Immortal,” “Lithium” and “Everybody’s Fool” with new orchestral musicians in each city they visit.

“It’s a beautiful tightrope live,” she said. “It’s weird and it’s scary. Anything could happen.”

Lee said she has wanted since she was a teenager to perform with a full, live orchestra, but always thought it was too expensive and difficult to organize until her new management team came along and helped her realize her dream.

“I simultaneously wanted to be in a rock band and wanted to be Danny Elfman and score film and the sound of the band really is sort of a combination of those things,” she said. “It just felt like it would be so fun and fulfilling to finally show a whole other side to the music that I really feel very connected to.” [Source]