Evanescence’s Grammy-winning smash hit, “Bring Me To Life,” has reached two billion streams on Spotify. “Bring Me To Life” appeared on the group’s debut album, Fallen, which also included the global chart-topping singles “My Immortal,” “Going Under,” and “Everybody’s Fool.”
Upon release in 2003, “Bring Me To Life” hit the top spot on the UK charts and peaked at No.5 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance and was also nominated for Best Rock Song. At the ceremony, Evanescence also won the award for Best New Artist. They were nominated for Album Of The Year, for Fallen, Best Rock Album, and Best Rock Song, for “Bring Me To Life.”
“I was really just starting to find my voice lyrically when we were making Fallen, starting to see how the more honest I was, the more powerful I felt,” lead singer Amy Lee told Dazed of the song. “Bring Me to Life,” she said, was inspired by this period of transition, expressing “true desires, unspoken frustrations and fears, standing up to the bullshit around me [that] I was just on the cusp of being able to defeat.”
Lee also explained how the song pulled from an encounter with her future husband. She was in a different relationship at the time, an abusive one, and he looked her in the eye and asked if she was happy. “He just seemed to see right through me,” she said. “It was like he was the only one who did and it affected me… the exposure was a shock but it felt good. He was an unknowing part of my emancipation.” The interaction inspired the opening lines of “Bring Me to Life”: “How can you see into my eyes like open doors?/Leading you down into my core/Where I’ve become so numb.” “The song was initially about him,” Lee said. “But in a broader way about breaking free from something I knew I had the power to if I was brave enough.”
Lee has also revealed that the band were pushed to feature a male vocalist. “It was presented to me as, ‘You’re a girl singing in a rock band, there’s nothing else like that out there, nobody’s going to listen to you,’” she said. “‘You need a guy to come in and sing back-up for it to be successful,’” In the end, Paul McCoy of 12 Stones contributed to the track.
“Adding the rap wasn’t what I wanted, but I did get to write it, and it didn’t ruin us like I was worried about,” said Lee. “Thank God we had more songs to follow up with and clarify who we were. Getting there took time and struggle and determination.”
