Amy Lee
Amy Lynn Lee is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She is the co-founder, lead vocalist, lead songwriter, and keyboardist of rock band Evanescence. A classically trained pianist, Lee began writing music at age 11 and co-founded Evanescence at 13, inspired by various musical genres and film scores from an early age. Lee has participated in other musical projects, including Nightmare Revisited and Muppets: The Green Album, and composed music for several films, including War Story, Indigo Grey: The Passage, and the song "Speak to Me" for Voice from the Stone. She has also released the covers EP Recover, Vol. 1, the soundtrack album to War Story, the children's album Dream Too Much, and collaborated with various artists including Korn, Seether, Bring Me the Horizon, Lindsey Stirling, Body Count, Wagakki Band, Halsey, Poppy, and Courtney LaPlante.
Alongside her awards and nominations with Evanescence, Lee's other accolades include: the Songwriter Icon Award from the National Music Publishers Association ; Best Vocalist at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards ; Rock Goddess of the Year at Loudwire Music Awards ; Best Film Score by the Moondance International Film Festival for Indigo Grey: The Passage ; and the Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Song in Independent Film for "Speak to Me". In 2012, VH1 named Lee one of the top 100 greatest women in music. Lee is the American chairperson for the international epilepsy awareness foundation Out of the Shadows, and in 2012 was honored with United Cerebral Palsy's Luella Bennack Award for her work.
Early life and musical start
Amy Lee was born on December 13, 1981, in Riverside, California, to parents John Lee, who worked as a disc jockey and voice-over artist, and Sara Cargill. The oldest of five siblings, Lee has two living sisters. She had a younger sister who died at age three from an unidentified illness when Lee was six years old, and a younger brother who died in 2018 at age 24 after struggling with severe epilepsy for most of his life. Lee said that when her little sister died, her "whole perception of life changed", and it influenced her rumination on death. She wrote the songs "Hello" from Fallen and "Like You" from The Open Door for her late sister. After her sister's death, Lee did not allow herself "a lot of outward grief" to protect her parents' emotions. She spent time by herself creating, which became a self-soothing medium.Lee discovered a passion for the piano in early childhood, wanting to play the instrument at age six after hearing her mother play. Classical music was her first musical influence as a child, inspiring her to become a musician and composer. She was first inspired by Mozart when she watched the 1984 film Amadeus at eight years old. Beethoven was another early classical inspiration, as well as Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer's film scores. She wanted to take piano lessons, and studied classical piano for nine years. Lee considers the Lacrimosa movement of Mozart's Requiem her favorite piece of music, and wove it into The Open Door song "Lacrymosa".
Lee began writing poetry about eternity and loneliness at age 10. Her mother had expressed concern about her writing, suggesting she see a therapist. Lee thought about taking antidepressants at the time but chose not to as she felt it would take her "soul away" and she "wouldn't be able to feel anything." One of the first songs she remembered writing was an instrumental piece called "Eternity of the Remorse", writing the sheet music when she was 11. Her first song with lyrics was called "A Single Tear", which she wrote for an eighth-grade assignment, recording it on a cassette tape and playing guitar while her friend from choir did backup vocals.
During her pre-teen years, Lee's family moved to many places, including West Palm Beach, Florida, and Rockford, Illinois, eventually settling in Little Rock, Arkansas. When her family moved to Little Rock, Lee had a lot of pent-up "negativity". In Little Rock, she attended Pulaski Academy, a private college preparatory school, starting in junior high. She described the school as a "weird fit" for her, where she was a loner for a while, and experienced bullying for dressing differently, which she would later embrace during high school. Lee found solace in writing, and joining the school choir helped her slowly gain confidence in her voice. She was in the alto section of her choir. Lee was initially insecure as a singer, and only used singing as a vehicle for her writing. A self-described "choir nerd", she became president of her high school's choir, and wrote a choir piece called "Listen to the Rain", which the choir teacher liked and asked her to direct. The piece was performed by the choir in graduation.
Originally wanting to focus on classical or film score composing, Lee's plan changed as her "tastes got darker". In late childhood and throughout her teens, she listened to a variety of musical styles, including alternative music, grunge, hard rock, industrial music, death metal, groove metal, and electronica artists like Björk and Portishead. Lee's earliest memory of wanting to fuse various musical genres, especially contrasting styles, was when she was training in classical piano and noticed that a "real shreddy" section of a composition from Baroque composer Bach resembled heavy metal. She found "so many similarities to be drawn, almost more so the further out you go on both sides".
Lee's extra-curricular activities involved working on music, playing music with others from school, and freelance painting. She spent most of her free time making music at her house late at night. By age 13, Lee was inspired to form her own band, her musical vision for it being a fusion of her diverse musical tastes including cinematic and classical music, alternative, metal, and electronic music. In 1994, she met budding guitarist Ben Moody when she was 13 at a Christian youth camp; when others in the camp were playing sports, she played piano and he played acoustic guitar and she thought they could play music together. Lee thinks what drew them together at the time was that they "didn't fit in that well" and were "out of element in this silly camp environment."
Career
1994–present: Evanescence
In 1994, Lee played Moody a cassette tape of her playing guitar and singing a song she wrote and the two began working on music at Lee's home. They were soon performing acoustic sets at bookstores and coffee houses in Little Rock and co-founded Evanescence. What made Lee want to start Evanescence was "the idea of combinations that were unlikely". Lee wanted to combine her various musical tastes, "bringing something from the cinematic and classical symphonic world and marrying it to metal, hard rock and alternative music." "There was all this music that was inspiring me. And Evanescence was the product of these two extremes combining". The duo independently recorded two EPs: Evanescence EP and Sound Asleep EP. Their demos got them airplay on the local modern rock station in Little Rock, and helped them develop a local fanbase, play a couple of bigger shows a year, and hire guest musicians to perform other instruments live. Although Lee and Moody performed with guest musicians, Evanescence remained a duo. After graduating high school, Lee attended Middle Tennessee State University to study music theory and composition for film scoring, but left after a semester to solely focus on Evanescence. They packaged a demo CD, Origin, to showcase to record labels.Evanescence was signed by Wind Up Records in 2001, and moved to Los Angeles, where they completed their debut album, Fallen. Most of Lee's writing on Fallen was driven by her mindset during a relationship she was in with an abusive man. Some of the songs on the album were composed by Lee and Moody when they were young teens, including three songs originally from their earlier independent records. Lee and Moody said they did not consider their music to be "goth" or nu metal. In October 2003, Moody left the band in the middle of the Fallen tour, citing "creative differences". Lee said it was a relief that he left because of tensions created within the band. "It was a really uncomfortable situation for everybody... completely unstable and unhappy.... I knew something was going to happen and I didn't know what and I was afraid everything we worked for had the potential of going down the toilet." Tour guitarist John LeCompt commented in 2006 that Lee "gained authority as soon as Ben Moody walked out the door. They had an equal partnership, but he was the man, he had to strangle the band, all the life out of it". In Lee's termination letter to their manager, she stated that Moody was physically and verbally abusive to her. With Moody gone, "a weight had been lifted".
Lee's creative disagreements with Moody included his strict approach to songwriting and focus on commerciality; he would "always be corralling" her ideas, and wanting to push the band in a more commercial, pop direction, and his influences were "a lot different" than hers. "A lot of the reason it's been so much fun writing is that we're not thinking about that. It's like, 'What do we like? What's fun?'", and there is "no pressure of wanting to rule the world", Lee explained. In 2005, Moody conceded that they had different approaches: " is much more creative than I am... I am a bit more commercial minded... she is more educated musically, and she wanted to explore that.... I think in my immaturity at the time, I did that in just a way-too-controlling manner — it was like my way or the highway. We just couldn't meet in the middle, so I was like, 'The hell with it.'"
Lee called former Cold guitarist Terry Balsamo to replace Moody on the Fallen tour, and he soon became Evanescence's permanent lead guitarist and Lee's co-writing partner. She and Balsamo "clicked" and "connected on a lot of musical interests". During the tour, Lee wrote a song titled "The Last Song I'm Wasting on You", recording it in a bathroom on an analog recording device. When asked if the track was about Moody, Lee said, "If I answer that, then I'm not hiding anything anymore. But I just sort of answered it, didn't I?". She later deemed it "one of those personal, hard moments, when beauty is born out of pain".
After finishing the tour for Evanescence's live album and DVD Anywhere but Home and overwhelmed by label pressure, Lee retreated to her house, cut off contact with people, and spent the next 10 months writing music again, painting and going to therapy. She said of her first therapy sessions, "For the first, I don't know, lots of sessions, I'd just go in and cry. Every time. I guess I was letting out all the ghosts of my past." Lee found comfort in therapy, an environment where she felt she could speak freely and "not feel that anything I said was wrong". She referenced a session of interpreting recurring themes in her dreams, acknowledging a longstanding, deep-rooted feeling of "always something looming under the surface", which she later overcame. During this time, Lee had invasive experiences with stalkers that forced her to leave her house a couple of nights. This experience led her to write the song "Snow White Queen" from her and a stalker's perspective. Other songs Lee wrote throughout these months included "Lacrymosa" and "Together Again".
Lee collaborated with Balsamo, co-writing music together for Evanescence's second album, The Open Door. The writing experience for The Open Door was "the best process" Lee ever had because she had "free reign" and could "do whatever I wanted without being judged". In 2006, Lee said that when she listened back to Fallen, she "hear all the vulnerability and the fear and all the childish things in me that are just human." While Lee was drowning in the misery of her experiences in Fallen, she said The Open Door is largely about her acknowledging her issues and deliberating "what do I have to do to work this out." In the record, she is "purging the trials", but overall it comes from a less hopeless place and with a more reflective outlook. Throughout the stages of writing The Open Door, Lee had moved from California, rented a place in Florida, and eventually settled in New York. After the end of The Open Doors tour, Lee took a break to recollect herself and live life away from the industry.
After about 18 months, Lee began writing music again, and took harp lessons out of a desire to learn the instrument. In 2009, Evanescence began playing live shows again, with Lee realizing that she missed this part of her life, stating: "I had to get back together with all the guys, and we practiced all the old stuff... and I enjoyed it so much. I started falling back in love with that part of me, the Evanescence part. I'd kind of been doing everything else, writing-wise, by myself, and I was like, 'Oh yeah, I love this stuff too. Maybe we should all make a record!'" Evanescence's third studio album, the self-titled Evanescence, was released in 2011. Lee said that the album's title was a reflection of it being "about the band"; unlike previous albums, the record was composed collaboratively as a band with all bandmembers contributing. Its lyrical themes include Lee "falling back in love" with Evanescence, her being inspired by nature and the ocean, brokenness, the quest for freedom, and falling in love. Different from The Open Door, which was "all about me and my personal experiences", Evanescence also includes Lee's musings on events that occurred to others in her life. "But really, whatever makes me feel the most, that's what's on the record, because that's what I need to get off my chest."
After the touring cycle for Evanescence, Lee took an extended break. In October 2013, Wind-up Records sold part of their catalog of artists, including Evanescence and their master recordings, to Bicycle Music Company. In January 2014, it was reported that Lee had filed a lawsuit against Wind-up Records for $1.5 million in unpaid royalties owed to the band. In March 2014, Lee announced on her Twitter that she and Evanescence had been released from her Wind-up Records contract and she was now an independent artist; she stated: "Today, for the first time in 13 years, I am a free and independent artist. I have wanted this for so long and I am so happy", adding that this meant she was "free to do anything, Ev included."
Following several solo projects by Lee from 2014 to 2017, including film scoring, and Evanescence's resumed touring in 2015, the band worked on their fourth studio album, Synthesis, released in 2017. Synthesis is an album of orchestral and electronica re-recordings of the band's previous material in addition to two new songs and instrumentals. The album's release was followed by the Synthesis Live concert tour in which the band performed with a live orchestra for the first time.
In April 2020, Lee announced the release date of Evanescence's fifth album, The Bitter Truth. In a Q&A with Forbes in May 2020, Lee mentioned that the "image and idea" of the band from the early days was "something that combined multiple dramas, from the dramatic to the rock to the classical to the score", and that although many things have changed since, the "idea that started this whole thing is still there". Four songs from the album were released as singles throughout 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, while a virtual live-streamed show was performed by the band from their recording base at Rock Falcon Studio, Nashville, in December 2020. The album was released on March 26, 2021.