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Evanescence‘s Amy Lee has revealed that her record label once tried to insert a male vocalist into the band’s lineup in order to show audiences something “familiar”.
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Speaking in a new interview, the frontwoman recalled the release of the band’s first single, 2003’s ‘Bring Me To Life’. She explained that the song’s guest vocalist Paul McCoy came in as a result of a compromise she had to make with her label.
“The fact that it was a woman and a piano that started the track was just too much,” she told The Forty-Five, adding that they wanted a guy in the band full time, but she disagreed. “I had to think we were being dropped for that because I said no. Eventually we came to the compromise that we only had to do it on one song and it could be a guest vocalist.”
She added: “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.”
Lee went on to say that she looks back on ‘Bring Me To Life’ warmly now, but feels betrayed that it was a choice she had to make at all.
“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,” she said. “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.”
She concluded: “Luckily I did stand up for myself, but I would have wished that I’d tried harder. We did survive it, thank God.”
Back in August, Lee opened up about the lack of female rock singers, after being grilled on the issue during a recent interview.
Posting on Facebook, Lee explained that she was asked about “the lack of women historically on rock radio and in the mainstream rock world,” but wished to share a more detailed answer after being unable to fully articulate herself during the interview.
She wrote: “Honestly, women DO get skipped over. We DO get left out of the recap when it all boils down. It IS harder to make it onto the cover or the radio. Because our face is not the classic, quintessential face of rock…if you’re thinking of it as a literal face.
“I think it’s embedded subconsciously in our brains that women in rock are less authentic somehow, like we’re next gen. We’re part 2. Not the original. A niche little off-brand thing. But here’s the deal: The true heart of rock music is the spirit of REBELLION.”
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