Isn't it ironic? Dontcha think?
I'm going to make an Evanescence hoodie :)
And I bought another dress for homecoming. Think 50's. I'm in love with it.
I just love this interview:
There's one in every crowd. As Amy Lee took the stage in a corset, skirt and stockings to lead her band through a set that merged her heavenly vocals with Ben Moody's chunky, demonic power chords, some Neanderthal in the crowd let loose with the most desperate and clichéd four words one could hear at a rock show.
"Show me your t--s!"
He was at the wrong show.
"Who in here doesn't want me to show them my t--s?" Lee countered to the audience.
After the fans roared back supportively, she groused, "I am so sick and tired of seeing girls get up here and show their t--s."
"I respect myself, I always have," Lee later explained. "I don't think there's any reason for some of the stuff that women celebrities do. It's a real shame, and it offends me because you're representing me. We're all women, we're in this together."
Even if the belly-baring and exposed-thong set disagrees, Evanescence fans sure don't. After years of none-too-coy Lolitas ruling the prefab pop realm, rocker girls have finally found someone strong and secure to admire.
"She's not like Britney," said Evanescence fan Stephanie Croks, 19. "She doesn't have to get all slutty onstage and wear stripper costumes."
Instead, Lee stomps around and pumps her fist in the air as any tough-guy frontman would. Her voice soars to operatic highs above the music's ominous tones while Moody's guitar comes on like a snakebite, puncturing the melody with precision then spreading distorted fuzz like so much crippling venom. The dichotic combination offers a fresh take on the played-out nü-metal genre, and it's allowed the Little Rock, Arkansas, group to be one of the few female-fronted rock bands to hover near the top the charts in the last five years. Propelled by its first single, "Bring Me to Life," Evanescence's debut, Fallen, has sold more that 1.3 million copies. And they've also found success across the pond, where "Bring Me to Life" is #1 on the U.K. singles chart.
If female artists who rely on their sex appeal from the get-go offend Lee, strong women who eventually cave to the pressures to tart themselves up are really disappointing.
So even when sales of Fallen slip and Evanescence's star begins to fade, Lee, without naming names, vowed that she would never pull a Jewel and use her natural assets to boost her career.
"Every time a cool rock chick or actress seems to respect themselves as a strong woman, I'm like, 'Yeah!' " she said emphatically. "And I love them, and they're my girls. And then they start to go downhill and people aren't paying attention anymore. So they start stripping their clothes off, because that's all they have left. I swear to everything I've ever known, I will never do that."
Given Evanescence's trajectory thus far, it's a crossroads Lee won't face for some time.
"Wow, three months ago you were playing Nick's Fat City, and now you're on the main stage of X-Fest!" shouted a local promoter backstage at the multi-band festival sponsored by Pittsburgh's 105.9 FM. "What happened?"
Throughout Evanescence's meteoric ascent, some have written the band off as "Linkin Park with a chick singer." But Amy Lee is a lot more than Chester Bennington with nicer legs.
The two bands certainly have similar elements, especially on "Bring Me to Life," where electronic underpinnings bolster a rap cameo by 12 Stones' Paul McCoy. But Lee's register and range push the boundaries of Evanescence's music much further. High harmonies aren't grossly out of place, and low-end rhythms sound deeper when they're offset by Lee's vocals wafting a few octaves above.
"Who would have thought they'd work together," Lee said of Evanescence's seemingly conflicting styles. "I'm surprised people didn't figure out that those two things went together before."
Since Fallen's release in early March, when it debuted at #7, it hasn't once left the Billboard albums chart's top 10, an extraordinary three-month streak that in the last year only a few artists - Eminem, 50 Cent and Avril Lavigne among them - can share. A reason for the continued success is Evanescence's elastic allure that stretches from teenagers looking to relate, to nü-metalheads who otherwise are left to a slurry of bands that crunch and whine almost identically, to older fans who deem Lee's voice pleasant enough to balance music that pushes their levels of tolerance.
"They have a decent blend of sounds and do a good job of bringing everything together," said 21-year-old Steve, a dead ringer for Ministry's Al Jourgensen, attending an Evanescence show wearing a Pissing Razors T-shirt and a hat adorned with Tool, Deftones and Slipknot pins. "It's different, it's new, people like it. I'm more of a heavier music fan, but there's a side of me that likes Evanescence."
The group's widespread appeal is evident on the airwaves as well. "Bring Me to Life" was first released on modern rock and alternative radio stations as the lead single off the soundtrack to February's "Daredevil" flick. From there it topped the playlists of conventional rock stations and finally pop/top 40 radio, too, where it currently sits at #2, according to trade magazine Radio & Records, sandwiched between Justin Timberlake and R. Kelly.
With stations across the board taking it upon themselves to play new single "Going Under" before the official record-company push, the Evanescence effect shows no signs of letting up.
"I hope that's because we don't just have a couple of good songs or a couple of songs that sound a certain way," Lee said. "Our record is full of [good] songs because we've been working on writing them for eight years now. So there's so much that's been put into it."
A 14-year-old Ben Moody met Amy Lee, a year younger than himself, while both attended summer camp in Arkansas. Classically trained in piano and a member of her school choir (she would later reach All-State status, twice), Lee was somewhat of a loner at camp and often took solace behind the ivories.
"Going into the corner and playing the piano was my way of having something to do instead of sitting there being like [makes a bored face]," she said.
While she was playing Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)," Moody approached. They discussed their musical preferences and found common ground in grunge, Jimi Hendrix and '80s metal.
"I don't think either of us really fit in that well, and possibly that's what drew us together," Lee explained. "We were both musicians out of our element in this silly camp environment."
Within a month of that first encounter, Lee and Moody were writing songs together. A few years later, they were playing acoustic sets in bookstores and coffee shops, eventually recording a demo, Origin, in 2000 and hawking it at shows. To round out their live sound, they recruited some musical friends by offering them either dinner or $20, but their shared vision of Evanescence never stretched beyond the two of them.
"A lot of it was because we're limited on resources," Moody said. "We also didn't want to bring in all these people who were permanent members because then they'd want to write, and that was just complicated for us."
As it turned out, two players who performed with Lee and Moody the most, guitarist John LeCompt and bassist William Boyd, are still part of the Evanescence concert experience. Drummer Rocky Gray completed the lineup in December 2002.
Evanescence's trajectory has been so strong and steep, not even the negatively connoted tag "Christian rock" could sink - or even slow - their ship. In April, days before an interview in Entertainment Weekly was to hit newsstands, Wind-Up Records pulled copies of Fallen from Christian retail outlets. The interview found Moody cursing and not quite agreeing with the Christian rock tag attached to them - despite being quoted three years ago as saying Evanescence's message was simply "God is love." So instead of being ejected from those outlets, which would have made for much more salacious headlines, their label was savvy enough to strike preemptively.
Nevertheless, the media jumped on the story. And Evanescence fans didn't seem to care. One post on the Web site www.punkreviews.com summed it up best: "This whole debate over whether Evanescence is a Christian band is kind of dumb."
"It was just nothing blown into something," Lee said. "We're doing well and [the media] has to look for something to be wrong with us. There are things wrong with us, but that's not it."
"I have a very weak stomach and can't eat some foods," Moody offered.
"And sometimes I pick my nose," Lee said. "There you have it."
As Evanescence continue to carve their place in the musical pantheon, Lee's standing as a role model for women who rock is also being shaped.
Adopting her hairstyle and penchant for black-and-white striped stockings and armbands, fans imitate her outward image at shows, but it's Lee's inner self that leaves the most lasting impression.
"Amy's great," said 19-year-old Annie Thompson. "Her lyrics are really personal and poetic. I feel like I can totally relate to them. Like, she knows what I'm going through because she's been there, too."
"Whenever you're in a position to share yourself so openly to people, the ones who listen are really going to care," Lee said. "A lot of fans come up and say, 'This song changed my life, can you tell me what you meant when you wrote it?' or 'This song saved me when I had to go through a messy divorce.' It's really moving sometimes."
Some fans at the Pittsburgh radio festival waited up to 90 minutes to be the first in line for autographs and Polaroids. Others, like 23-year-old Richard Titus, made the long trek from Philadelphia just to see his second Evanescence show in as many weeks.
Titus showed his gratitude by anointing Lee with a kiss on her hand, just as he did when he met her in his hometown. Some fans, however, try to offer the band a lot more.
"Two nights ago, a bra was thrown onstage," Moody recalled. "At first I thought it was for me, so I'm like, 'Hey,' and put it on my guitar. But then I noticed it said, 'Property of Amy.' "
"And he was trying to convince me that the owner of the bra was named Amy!" Lee gibed.
"Then, looking at it again, I saw her name, 'Maggie,' next to her number - which I should give out because I'm a little upset that I didn't get a bra. Amy gets all the groupies."
All obsessed fans, however, aren't of the same sex. And unlike the crude dudes who shout obscenities and make sordid requests at shows, most of Lee's male admirers are a lot more gentlemanly.
"Some people at the shows are yelling, 'Marry Me!' or whatever," she said. "And I'm like, 'Guys, let's just stop it.' "
"Oh, come on," Moody interrupted. "You love it."
"Yeah, I love it," Lee cooed. "I'm a girl."
And I bought another dress for homecoming. Think 50's. I'm in love with it.
I just love this interview:
There's one in every crowd. As Amy Lee took the stage in a corset, skirt and stockings to lead her band through a set that merged her heavenly vocals with Ben Moody's chunky, demonic power chords, some Neanderthal in the crowd let loose with the most desperate and clichéd four words one could hear at a rock show.
"Show me your t--s!"
He was at the wrong show.
"Who in here doesn't want me to show them my t--s?" Lee countered to the audience.
After the fans roared back supportively, she groused, "I am so sick and tired of seeing girls get up here and show their t--s."
"I respect myself, I always have," Lee later explained. "I don't think there's any reason for some of the stuff that women celebrities do. It's a real shame, and it offends me because you're representing me. We're all women, we're in this together."
Even if the belly-baring and exposed-thong set disagrees, Evanescence fans sure don't. After years of none-too-coy Lolitas ruling the prefab pop realm, rocker girls have finally found someone strong and secure to admire.
"She's not like Britney," said Evanescence fan Stephanie Croks, 19. "She doesn't have to get all slutty onstage and wear stripper costumes."
Instead, Lee stomps around and pumps her fist in the air as any tough-guy frontman would. Her voice soars to operatic highs above the music's ominous tones while Moody's guitar comes on like a snakebite, puncturing the melody with precision then spreading distorted fuzz like so much crippling venom. The dichotic combination offers a fresh take on the played-out nü-metal genre, and it's allowed the Little Rock, Arkansas, group to be one of the few female-fronted rock bands to hover near the top the charts in the last five years. Propelled by its first single, "Bring Me to Life," Evanescence's debut, Fallen, has sold more that 1.3 million copies. And they've also found success across the pond, where "Bring Me to Life" is #1 on the U.K. singles chart.
If female artists who rely on their sex appeal from the get-go offend Lee, strong women who eventually cave to the pressures to tart themselves up are really disappointing.
So even when sales of Fallen slip and Evanescence's star begins to fade, Lee, without naming names, vowed that she would never pull a Jewel and use her natural assets to boost her career.
"Every time a cool rock chick or actress seems to respect themselves as a strong woman, I'm like, 'Yeah!' " she said emphatically. "And I love them, and they're my girls. And then they start to go downhill and people aren't paying attention anymore. So they start stripping their clothes off, because that's all they have left. I swear to everything I've ever known, I will never do that."
Given Evanescence's trajectory thus far, it's a crossroads Lee won't face for some time.
"Wow, three months ago you were playing Nick's Fat City, and now you're on the main stage of X-Fest!" shouted a local promoter backstage at the multi-band festival sponsored by Pittsburgh's 105.9 FM. "What happened?"
Throughout Evanescence's meteoric ascent, some have written the band off as "Linkin Park with a chick singer." But Amy Lee is a lot more than Chester Bennington with nicer legs.
The two bands certainly have similar elements, especially on "Bring Me to Life," where electronic underpinnings bolster a rap cameo by 12 Stones' Paul McCoy. But Lee's register and range push the boundaries of Evanescence's music much further. High harmonies aren't grossly out of place, and low-end rhythms sound deeper when they're offset by Lee's vocals wafting a few octaves above.
"Who would have thought they'd work together," Lee said of Evanescence's seemingly conflicting styles. "I'm surprised people didn't figure out that those two things went together before."
Since Fallen's release in early March, when it debuted at #7, it hasn't once left the Billboard albums chart's top 10, an extraordinary three-month streak that in the last year only a few artists - Eminem, 50 Cent and Avril Lavigne among them - can share. A reason for the continued success is Evanescence's elastic allure that stretches from teenagers looking to relate, to nü-metalheads who otherwise are left to a slurry of bands that crunch and whine almost identically, to older fans who deem Lee's voice pleasant enough to balance music that pushes their levels of tolerance.
"They have a decent blend of sounds and do a good job of bringing everything together," said 21-year-old Steve, a dead ringer for Ministry's Al Jourgensen, attending an Evanescence show wearing a Pissing Razors T-shirt and a hat adorned with Tool, Deftones and Slipknot pins. "It's different, it's new, people like it. I'm more of a heavier music fan, but there's a side of me that likes Evanescence."
The group's widespread appeal is evident on the airwaves as well. "Bring Me to Life" was first released on modern rock and alternative radio stations as the lead single off the soundtrack to February's "Daredevil" flick. From there it topped the playlists of conventional rock stations and finally pop/top 40 radio, too, where it currently sits at #2, according to trade magazine Radio & Records, sandwiched between Justin Timberlake and R. Kelly.
With stations across the board taking it upon themselves to play new single "Going Under" before the official record-company push, the Evanescence effect shows no signs of letting up.
"I hope that's because we don't just have a couple of good songs or a couple of songs that sound a certain way," Lee said. "Our record is full of [good] songs because we've been working on writing them for eight years now. So there's so much that's been put into it."
A 14-year-old Ben Moody met Amy Lee, a year younger than himself, while both attended summer camp in Arkansas. Classically trained in piano and a member of her school choir (she would later reach All-State status, twice), Lee was somewhat of a loner at camp and often took solace behind the ivories.
"Going into the corner and playing the piano was my way of having something to do instead of sitting there being like [makes a bored face]," she said.
While she was playing Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)," Moody approached. They discussed their musical preferences and found common ground in grunge, Jimi Hendrix and '80s metal.
"I don't think either of us really fit in that well, and possibly that's what drew us together," Lee explained. "We were both musicians out of our element in this silly camp environment."
Within a month of that first encounter, Lee and Moody were writing songs together. A few years later, they were playing acoustic sets in bookstores and coffee shops, eventually recording a demo, Origin, in 2000 and hawking it at shows. To round out their live sound, they recruited some musical friends by offering them either dinner or $20, but their shared vision of Evanescence never stretched beyond the two of them.
"A lot of it was because we're limited on resources," Moody said. "We also didn't want to bring in all these people who were permanent members because then they'd want to write, and that was just complicated for us."
As it turned out, two players who performed with Lee and Moody the most, guitarist John LeCompt and bassist William Boyd, are still part of the Evanescence concert experience. Drummer Rocky Gray completed the lineup in December 2002.
Evanescence's trajectory has been so strong and steep, not even the negatively connoted tag "Christian rock" could sink - or even slow - their ship. In April, days before an interview in Entertainment Weekly was to hit newsstands, Wind-Up Records pulled copies of Fallen from Christian retail outlets. The interview found Moody cursing and not quite agreeing with the Christian rock tag attached to them - despite being quoted three years ago as saying Evanescence's message was simply "God is love." So instead of being ejected from those outlets, which would have made for much more salacious headlines, their label was savvy enough to strike preemptively.
Nevertheless, the media jumped on the story. And Evanescence fans didn't seem to care. One post on the Web site www.punkreviews.com summed it up best: "This whole debate over whether Evanescence is a Christian band is kind of dumb."
"It was just nothing blown into something," Lee said. "We're doing well and [the media] has to look for something to be wrong with us. There are things wrong with us, but that's not it."
"I have a very weak stomach and can't eat some foods," Moody offered.
"And sometimes I pick my nose," Lee said. "There you have it."
As Evanescence continue to carve their place in the musical pantheon, Lee's standing as a role model for women who rock is also being shaped.
Adopting her hairstyle and penchant for black-and-white striped stockings and armbands, fans imitate her outward image at shows, but it's Lee's inner self that leaves the most lasting impression.
"Amy's great," said 19-year-old Annie Thompson. "Her lyrics are really personal and poetic. I feel like I can totally relate to them. Like, she knows what I'm going through because she's been there, too."
"Whenever you're in a position to share yourself so openly to people, the ones who listen are really going to care," Lee said. "A lot of fans come up and say, 'This song changed my life, can you tell me what you meant when you wrote it?' or 'This song saved me when I had to go through a messy divorce.' It's really moving sometimes."
Some fans at the Pittsburgh radio festival waited up to 90 minutes to be the first in line for autographs and Polaroids. Others, like 23-year-old Richard Titus, made the long trek from Philadelphia just to see his second Evanescence show in as many weeks.
Titus showed his gratitude by anointing Lee with a kiss on her hand, just as he did when he met her in his hometown. Some fans, however, try to offer the band a lot more.
"Two nights ago, a bra was thrown onstage," Moody recalled. "At first I thought it was for me, so I'm like, 'Hey,' and put it on my guitar. But then I noticed it said, 'Property of Amy.' "
"And he was trying to convince me that the owner of the bra was named Amy!" Lee gibed.
"Then, looking at it again, I saw her name, 'Maggie,' next to her number - which I should give out because I'm a little upset that I didn't get a bra. Amy gets all the groupies."
All obsessed fans, however, aren't of the same sex. And unlike the crude dudes who shout obscenities and make sordid requests at shows, most of Lee's male admirers are a lot more gentlemanly.
"Some people at the shows are yelling, 'Marry Me!' or whatever," she said. "And I'm like, 'Guys, let's just stop it.' "
"Oh, come on," Moody interrupted. "You love it."
"Yeah, I love it," Lee cooed. "I'm a girl."