Amy Lee had no way of knowing just how impactful the song she wrote at 19 years old would eventually become. Years before she found herself fronting one of the biggest rock bands of the new millennium, she had penned some lyrics inspired by one simple question that changed her life.
The question: "Are you happy?"
"It just really caught me off guard," Amy recalled years later to Metal Hammer. "I felt very exposed, but it felt good at the same time, like he could see me. ‘How can you see into my eyes like open doors?'" The "he" in question was Josh Hartzler, a therapist and associate of Evanescence who was hanging out with the Little Rock, Arkansas-based four-piece in 2000, three years before the song he helped inspire would send them stratospheric.
“I’d been in a really bad, abusive relationship, which had been very difficult for a long time," Amy explained. "I thought that I was doing a pretty good job of pretending I was OK, but Josh, this guy that I didn’t know really well but I liked a lot, we went into a restaurant while my bandmembers were parking the car. When we sat down, he looked at me right in the eyes, and said, 'Are you happy?'"
Fast-forward two and a bit years and, following years mooching around rock's lower leagues, Evanescence found themselves signed to a label, Wind-Up, and in the process of recording their debut album. They also had a more refined version of the song Amy wrote at 19, and it was being readied for release as a single.
Now titled Bring Me To Life and featuring contributions from Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody and songwriter/producer David Hodges, the track was an emotional, nu metal-leaning goth rock banger, given a major level-up by some lush additional string orchestration from David Campbell - something Amy had "fought hard" with the label over to bring into the mix.
Amy didn't win every battle, though: with nu metal still just about clinging onto the pop culture zeitgeist, Wind-Up demanded a rapper be added to the track to give Bring Me To Life a slightly different dynamic. Famously, it wasn't exactly something Amy and her bandmates were delighted about.
“That was not our original plan," she told Metal Hammer. "It was something that we had to do. It was a concession we had to make for the label."
The rap was not our original plan. It was a concession we had to make for the label.
Amy Lee
Enter Paul McCoy of 12 Stones for what comfortably remains his biggest ever contribution to music: four bars of additional lyrics, a scream and a handful of 'Wake me up!/I can't wake up!'s for good measure.
"I wrote the part," Amy later revealed. "We took a lot of care in creating it the way that we wanted it to be. I worked with Paul to get it the way that we still felt fit our band.”
As Evanescence's frontwoman told it, it wasn't simply caving to label interference that left them unhappy with including the rap; they didn't want to be lumped in with a nu metal scene that was, at that point, less than a year from fizzling out of relevance.
“That’s one of the reasons we didn’t want a rapper in the song in the first place, because it puts it in a box," she confirmed. "Since that was our first song [from the album], that was the main reason for the fear. Because branching out, and trying different things, and playing around in the world that is more metal, playing around in the world that is more electronica, playing around a little bit in a classical way, those are all things that this band does.
"But with the first song you have to do your best to sum up who you are," she added. "You don’t give people a false idea of what they’re buying into. That was the thing we had to be very careful about.”
Ultimately, the rap stayed in, and the world got their first proper taste of Evanescence when Bring Me To Life was included on the soundtrack for appalling Ben Affleck Marvel movie Daredevil in February 2003. While the movie itself was slop, the song immediately made an impact: eager rock fans began clamouring for it to get plays at radio stations across the US.
"We had fans in countries we had never been to because they had the soundtrack and they heard it on the radio," Amy told the St Petersburg Times in 2004. "It started blowing up all over the world and then we had a reason to tour all over the world."
Despite the bouncy riffs and crowbarred-in rap giving the song a strong nu metal connection, its more gothic, romanticised overtones and symphonic bluster made it stand out, marking Evanescence out as a genuinely unique new force in the 2000s rock scene.
“All my favourite artists don’t sound like anything else around them that came out at the same time," mused Amy years later. "It’s not a copy, it’s something truly pure."
I felt like those things that made us unique were the things that could make us great.
Amy Lee
Upon release as a single, Bring Me To Life bowled into the top ten of 15 countries, hitting top five in the US and even landing the band a number one single in the UK. It'd eventually be certified triple platinum in the States after shifting more than three million copies.
"I felt like those things that made us unique were the things about us that could make us great," Amy observed. "But that, in the beginning, was exactly the opposite idea of the suits – they want something safe, they want something that’s been done before. So it was definitely a great feeling when we could prove them wrong and that we had a number one hit.”
The song's famous video, directed by Philipp Stölzl and featuring Amy hanging perilously out of the window of a tall apartment building on a dark, blustery night, has become a touchstone of millennial pop culture, dominating music video channels upon release. Since its upload to Youtube in 2009, it has surpassed over one and a half billion views.
"I did not know if I would have to use a stunt double for most of the angles, which would have restricted me a lot," Stözl told MTV. "But then it turned out that Amy did everything herself, hanging on Paul's arm for hours without getting tired. In the end, she is the one who made that shot strong."
That chart success and video channel dominance was just the beginning. Spearheaded by the success of Bring Me To Life, Evanescence's debut album, Fallen, would prove to be a smash hit upon its release in March 2003, earning the band another number one spot in the UK and eventually selling a cool 17 million copies worldwide, making it one of the biggest-selling albums of the 21st century.
It made for a whirlwind 12 months for the band that'd feature some major troughs - guitarist Ben Moody left in acrimonious circumstances in October 2003 - and some dizzying peaks. The biggest peak of all arguably came on February 8, 2004, over a year since Bring Me To Life's release, when Evanescence found themselves bagging two Grammys - one of which, for Best New Band, saw the band upset hot favourite 50 Cent.
“We went through a lot," Amy reflected. "That time was such a whirlwind of high highs and low lows for me. There was definitely some difficult stuff going on in the band, but at the same time, all these wonderful things were also happening, like the fact that we were getting to record in a real studio, and then we were nominated for a Grammy!
"There was a lot of happiness there," she added. "But, I was 21 years old, and I don’t think it matters how old you are – there’s no way to be prepared for it. There were a lot of difficulties in adjusting my life to that big change.”
Despite Amy believing that many cynics around the industry saw Evanescence as a "one hit wonder", their success hasn't gone anywhere: 22 years on from Bring Me To Life, Little Rock's finest continue to headline arenas the world over.
And, while Amy has since grown more accepting of Bring Me To Life's rap section, fans did eventually get to hear something a little truer to her original vision for the song; in 2023, to mark Fallen's 20th anniversary, Evanescence released a demo version, completely rap-free. "We needed to do something to commemorate the milestone of this year," Amy told Entertainment Weekly. "I really wanted to preserve the moment and do the best we could to honor what's already there."
Rap or no rap, one thing remains: Bring Me To Life is one of the definitive rock anthems of the 2000s, and still sounds as powerful, exciting and emotionally-charged now as it did in 2003. And as for that Josh Hartzler fella that asked that all-important question all those years ago? He and Amy ended up getting married. Some things are just destiny.
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