EVANESCENCE - Futuristic Music? (rock intro to the topic) / in ENGLISH

rock introduction to the topic

EVANESCENCE - Futurist Music?

This American rock group was founded in 1995 in Little Rock, Arkansas, by the singer Amy Lee and the former guitarist and composer Ben Moody when they were both just 14 years old. Both of them originally shared the songs authorship. They decided for the name Evanescence, which looks mysteriously and slightly Gothicly dark. After the first demo footage, their first real album Fallen was recorded in 2003. As they sought the way to promote their debut album, one global video game company offered them a participation on their new version of the game. The band accepted the offer and became the leading music attraction ot the market video gamers. After that the debut album has achieved a great commercial success. On the album Fallen, there was also their most successful song so far, „Bring Me To Life“, featuring guest male singer Paul McCoy from the band 12 Stones.

In addition to this hit single even another successful piece, My Immortal, also entered the music soundtrack of the action movie Daredevil, and finally the single „Bring Me To Life“ has earned them Grammy Award in 2004.

Surprisingly, just after the final success in the world of music, Ben Moody leaves the band during the concert tour of the debut album, because of creating differences, as he said. Few months later, Amy Lee explained that it was an inevitable decision that the two founders of the group separate, as they differed so much in plans and music preferences that they could no longer make any more album together.

Here is an example of this old truth that there is only one boss and one leader in a professionally working group of  musicians, who is woman in this case. So then, from desire to prove her authority she becomes even more rigid control freak of a dictator type. Therefore many musicians have come and left from Evanescence and as far as I know none of the original lineup except Amy is no longer in it.

The attitude that only the boss knows what's best can be sometimes counterproductive. The record company of Evanescence's first album asked the band to engage one male singer with Amy, what she didn't want and hardly agreed to such collaboration in the song "Bring Me To Life". That's how they helped this song to become a hit in a style of the classic hip-hop performers like Beastie Boys and Run-DMC, and the song remained their best sold single to this day.

As for their song lyrics I recommend reading. I will just say that in her lyrics the personality of the singer and band leader Amy Lee is especially exposed.

In the verses she reveals her intimacy so much, and makes it so passionately that she sometimes goes over to what I would call a kind of emotional hard-core sex, and then there comes often a female type of feeling of guilt about it.

However the lyrics of Amy Lee's songs are most often filled with fateful, fatalistic sentences that there is only ALL or NOTHING in life. Just LOVE or DEATH and nothing in between,

what is of course linked to the mainly Gothic atmosphere of her verses.

And finally there is always some betrayal, emotional breakdown and abandonment forever.

Interestingly, because of this dark and sometimes morbid atmosphere of her songs Amy Lee was often refused when she offered them for the Hollywood blockbusters of a fairytale genre.

BUT THAT WHAT IS TRULY INVENTIVE in this type of music is the mixing of genres that some decade ago could hardly be imagined to sound good together. Their music is heavily syncopated and based on guitar riffs, combining sound of heavy metal music with elements of very different music genres such as hip hop, funk, grunge and gothic rock.

I could bet that Amy Lee, as an artistically oriented composer and multi-instrumentalist, all in all sophisticated musician who tries to avoid commercialism would never really become the greatest star of her time. It's obvious from her childhood when she took classical piano lessons, and as a child wanted to become a classical composer inspired by Mozart, instead of a rock star. But I suppose that what Evanescence plays today is a futuristic style of music that will be much more appreciated in the near future than now. Namely such authors who don't think of commercialism but want to transfer the classic beauty of composing into contemporary music technology usually become the avant-garde that mainstream follows many years later. Then some other performers, less artistically ambitious but more oriented to selling music, become the new Elvis and the new Rolling Stones. Guess who was their Mozart before them? He didn't have a black tailcoat but had a black skin definitely.

The final question. You already know all about them and if Evanescence was a capitalist corporation, Evanescence would be…

a) Marvel Entertainment

b) Nintendo Co.

c) Vivid Entertainment

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