Record Label Wanted Male Singer To Make Evanescence Sound “Familiar”, Says Amy Lee

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Evanescence’s Frontwoman Amy Lee has revealed in a new interview that her record label tried to get a male vocalist into the bands line-up, so it would be “familiar” with audiences.

Speaking with The Forty-Five about the band’s first single ‘Bring Me To Life’, she explained that guest vocalist Paul McCoy was only used on the song as a result of a compromise between her and the label.

“The fact that it was a woman and a piano that started the track was just too much”

The label wanted a male vocalist in the band for good, “I had to think we were being dropped for that because I said no.” she said. Amy managed to come to an agreement with the label “Eventually we came to the compromise that we only had to do it on one song and it could be a guest vocalist. That was really hard for me because I had to start out with our first song feeling like I made a sacrifice on my art.”

Although she looks warmly back at the song now, Lee still feels betrayed that she had to make that decision “If that song, like that, was the only thing people ever heard of us on a mainstream level and then we went away, I would be not happy. I would be very disappointed in my career, because I would have felt really misunderstood and like I should have stood up for myself in the first place. Luckily I did stand up for myself, but I would have wished that I’d tried harder. We did survive it, thank god.”

You can listen to the 2003 single here: