Amy Lee

• 1. Introduction

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  Amy Lee was thirteen in 1994 when she sat down at a piano at a Christian youth camp while the other campers played sports. Nearby, a guitarist named Ben Moody picked up an acoustic guitar, and Lee thought the two of them could make music together. Years later she explained what drew them together: they "didn't fit in that well" and felt "out of their element in this silly camp environment." That chance pairing led to Evanescence, the rock band in which Lee became lead vocalist, lead songwriter and keyboardist. How does a classically trained pianist end up fronting a band that marries symphonic music to metal? Why did the partnership that began at that camp collapse in the middle of a tour? And what did Lee do when the band, and the label behind it, stopped being enough?

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• 2. A Childhood of Piano

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  Amy Lee was born on the 13th of December 1981 in Riverside, California. Her father, John Lee, worked as a disc jockey and voice-over artist, and her mother was Sara Cargill. Amy was the oldest of five siblings.

  When Lee was six, a younger sister died at the age of three from an unidentified illness. Lee later said her "whole perception of life changed". To protect her parents' feelings, she held back "a lot of outward grief" and spent her time alone creating things instead. That habit became a way of soothing herself. She later wrote "Hello" on Fallen and "Like You" on The Open Door for her late sister.

  Also at age six, Lee decided she wanted to play the piano after hearing her mother at the keys. Classical music was her first great influence. At eight she watched the 1984 film Amadeus, which pointed her toward Mozart. Beethoven followed, along with the film scores of Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. She studied classical piano for nine years. Her favorite piece of music is the Lacrimosa movement of Mozart's Requiem, and she wove it into "Lacrymosa" on The Open Door.

  At age 10, Lee began writing poetry about eternity and loneliness. Her mother worried enough to suggest a therapist. Lee considered antidepressants but decided against them, because she feared they would take her "soul away" and leave her numb. At 11 she wrote out the sheet music for an instrumental called "Eternity of the Remorse". Her first song with lyrics, "A Single Tear", began as an eighth-grade assignment. She recorded it on a cassette tape, playing guitar while a friend from choir sang backup.

  Her family moved often during her pre-teen years, with stops in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Rockford, Illinois, before settling in Little Rock, Arkansas. In Little Rock she attended Pulaski Academy, a private college preparatory school, from junior high onward. She called it a "weird fit". For a while she was a loner and was bullied for dressing differently, which she came to embrace by high school. The school choir slowly built her confidence. She sang alto, called herself a "choir nerd", and rose to president of the choir. Her piece "Listen to the Rain" pleased the choir teacher so much that Lee was asked to direct it, and the choir performed it at graduation.

  Most of her free time went to making music at home late at night, with freelance painting on the side.

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• 3. Fusing Extremes

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  A fast passage in a Bach composition, which Lee called "real shreddy", sounded to her like heavy metal while she was training in classical piano. That was her earliest memory of wanting to fuse contrasting styles. She found "so many similarities to be drawn, almost more so the further out you go on both sides".

  Her early plan was a career composing classical music or film scores. Then her "tastes got darker". Through childhood and her teens she listened to alternative music, grunge, hard rock, industrial music, death metal, groove metal, and electronica artists such as Björk and Portishead. Her idea for a band was to blend all of it, with cinematic and classical elements sitting beside metal and electronic sounds.

  In 1994, Lee played Moody a cassette of herself singing and playing guitar on a song she had written, and the two began working at her home. Soon they were performing acoustic sets at bookstores and coffee houses in Little Rock. Lee said she wanted to start Evanescence because of "the idea of combinations that were unlikely". Her goal was to take something from the cinematic and symphonic world and marry it to metal, hard rock and alternative music.

  The duo independently recorded the Evanescence EP in 1998 and the Sound Asleep EP in 1999. Demos earned them airplay on a local modern rock station, a regional fanbase, and a couple of bigger shows each year. They hired guest musicians for live performances, yet the band itself stayed a duo.

  After high school, Lee enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University to study music theory and composition for film scoring. She left after a single semester to focus entirely on the band. The pair packaged a demo CD called Origin in 2000 to show to record labels.

  Wind Up Records signed Evanescence in 2001, and the band moved to Los Angeles to finish its debut album, Fallen, released in 2003. Lee wrote most of it while in a relationship with an abusive man. Some songs dated back to when she and Moody were young teens, including three from their earlier independent records. Both rejected the labels "goth" and nu metal for their sound. Behind the scenes, the band's tensions were growing.

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• 4. Breaking Away

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  In October 2003, in the middle of the Fallen tour, Ben Moody left the band, citing "creative differences". Lee said his exit came as a relief, describing the situation before it as "a really uncomfortable situation for everybody". Tour guitarist John LeCompt remarked in 2006 that Lee "gained authority as soon as Ben Moody walked out the door". In her termination letter to the band's manager, Lee stated that Moody had been physically and verbally abusive to her. Afterward, she said, "a weight had been lifted".

  Their disagreements had been creative as well. Moody favored a strict approach to songwriting and kept pushing toward a commercial, pop direction, "always corralling" her ideas. Without that pressure, Lee said, there was "no pressure of wanting to rule the world". By 2005 Moody admitted that he had been far too controlling, summing up his old stance as "my way or the highway".

  To replace Moody on the Fallen tour, Lee called Terry Balsamo, a former guitarist for the band Cold. He soon became Evanescence's permanent lead guitarist and her co-writing partner. During that tour Lee wrote "The Last Song I'm Wasting on You" and recorded it in a bathroom on an analog device. Asked whether it was about Moody, she answered, "If I answer that, then I'm not hiding anything anymore. But I just sort of answered it, didn't I?"

  After the tour for the live album and DVD Anywhere but Home in 2004, Lee felt overwhelmed by pressure from the label. She retreated to her house, cut off contact with people, and spent ten months writing, painting and going to therapy. Of her first sessions she said, "I'd just go in and cry." During those months stalkers invaded her life so badly that she left her house for a couple of nights. That experience produced "Snow White Queen", written from both her perspective and the stalker's. She also wrote "Lacrymosa" and "Together Again" in that stretch.

  The Open Door, the second album, came out in 2006 with music co-written with Balsamo. Lee called the process "the best process" she ever had, since she could do whatever she wanted without being judged. Fallen had come from a place of misery. This record, she said, was about acknowledging her issues and asking what she had to do to work them out. While writing it she moved from California to a rented place in Florida and finally to New York. When the tour ended, she stepped away from the music industry.

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• 5. Independence Regained

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  About 18 months after that break, Lee began writing again and took harp lessons because she wanted to learn the instrument. In 2009 Evanescence began playing live shows once more. Rehearsing the old songs with the band, she said, made her "falling back in love" with that part of herself. Her solo writing had been done alone, and she realized she missed the group.

  The self-titled third album, Evanescence, was released on the 7th of October 2011. Lee said the title reflected a record "about the band", since every member contributed to the composing. Its themes include nature and the ocean, brokenness, the quest for freedom, and falling in love. Unlike The Open Door, which she called "all about me and my personal experiences", it also draws on events in the lives of others close to her.

  Its road was rocky. In 2010, Wind-up Records rejected an earlier version of the album that Steve Lillywhite had produced. Lee was "devastated" and "furious", yet she became "angry enough to write Evanescence's heaviest album". Three songs from the Lillywhite sessions made it onto the released record. She still felt unsatisfied about what she lovingly called her "broken record".

  In October 2013, Wind-up sold part of its catalog, including Evanescence's master recordings, to Bicycle Music Company. In January 2014, it was reported that Lee had sued Wind-up over $1.5 million in unpaid royalties owed to the band. In March 2014 she announced on Twitter that she and Evanescence had been released from her contract. "Today, for the first time in 13 years, I am a free and independent artist," she wrote.

  The band resumed touring in 2015 and released Synthesis in 2017. That album re-recorded earlier songs with orchestral and electronica arrangements, adding two new songs and instrumentals. The Synthesis Live tour followed, and Evanescence performed with a live orchestra for the first time.

  In April 2020, Lee announced a release date for the fifth album, The Bitter Truth. Four songs came out as singles through 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2020 the band streamed a virtual show from its recording base at Rock Falcon Studio in Nashville. The album arrived on the 26th of March 2021. Throughout all of this, Lee's side projects had been multiplying for more than a decade.

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• 6. Beyond the Band

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  In 2004, Lee said she was writing music for the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and that the studio rejected it as "too dark". Producers of the film replied that Evanescence music was never planned for the soundtrack. She used part of her instrumental to lead into "Good Enough", the last track of The Open Door.

  Her earliest guest work was modest. She sang backup on "Missing You" for Big Dismal's 2003 debut album Believe. Her backing vocals for the supergroup The Damning Well were removed from the final release because of record label issues. In 2004 she and her then-boyfriend Shaun Morgan recorded the duet "Broken" for Seether's Disclaimer II, which appeared on the soundtrack of the film The Punisher.

  Late in 2006 she made a brief appearance in the video for Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down". Each celebrity chose their own activity, and Lee chose to lay flowers on a grave at Trinity Church in Manhattan. She wore a black velvet coat that once belonged to Tim Burton. In February 2007 she performed with Korn on "Freak on a Leash" for MTV Unplugged: Korn.

  Tribute albums filled the late 2000s. For Disney's Nightmare Revisited in September 2008, she covered "Sally's Song", and she performed it at the Nightmare Before Christmas re-release premiere in Hollywood. She covered "Halfway Down the Stairs" for Muppets: The Green Album in 2011 and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" for the Johnny Cash tribute We Walk the Line in 2012. In October 2008 she told Spin she was writing folk and Celtic-influenced songs and needed to show she was "more than a one trick pony".

  On the 2nd of December 2013, it was announced that Lee had teamed with composer Dave Eggar on music for the drama film War Story. The film was dark and sparse in dialogue, which she called a "beautiful, sad platform for music". She wrote and produced the electronic song "Push the Button" entirely herself. The soundtrack album Aftermath, with ten tracks, was her first full-length album made without Evanescence. Eggar appears on eight tracks and the Moroccan-American musician Malika Zarra on one.

  In 2015 she recorded music with Eggar and Chuck Palmer for Hammerstep's short film Indigo Grey: The Passage. She composed "Speak to Me" for Eric D. Howell's film Voice from the Stone, and the video was filmed on the 22nd of October 2015 at the Castle of Celsa estate near Siena, Italy. Her covers EP Recover, Vol. 1, released on the 19th of February 2016, features Portishead's "It's A Fire", U2's "With or Without You", Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" and Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing".

  On the 30th of September 2016 came Dream Too Much, a family album released through Amazon Prime Music. Her father sings lead on "Goodnight My Love", and her sisters took part too. In 2017 she recorded an English version of Francesca Michielin's song "L'amore esiste" at Flux Studios in New York City in about a week, with Guy Sigsworth producing and Eggar arranging the strings.

  Collaborations multiplied from 2019. She joined Lindsey Stirling on "Love Goes On And On" and Body Count on "When I'm Gone". In 2020 she sang on Halestorm's "Break In" and on Bring Me the Horizon's song from Post Human: Survival Horror. Her song "Sakura Rising" with Japan's Wagakki Band was written and recorded the day before an orchestral show in Osaka on the 16th of February 2020, then finished through file sharing during the pandemic. In 2023 she voiced a character in Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar.

  In 2025, her song "Hand That Feeds" with Halsey for the film Ballerina topped the Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart before the film opened. Evanescence also performed "Fight Like A Girl", featuring K.Flay, over the end credits. On the 4th of September 2025 she released "End of You" with Poppy and Courtney LaPlante, produced by Jordan Fish.

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• 7. How She Writes

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  "Shut in" is how Lee describes her natural writing process, working in isolation. She prefers a "clean slate" before she begins, with no plan, following the flow of inspiration. She writes mainly with keyboards and music software, and she has engineered, programmed, mixed and produced her own music. Her demos layer chord progressions with piano, electronic sounds, sound effects and drum loops. She also plays organ, harp and guitar.

  Lyrics usually come last. Lee builds music and sounds first, and a mood she creates sonically often tells her what to write about. She rarely begins with a specific intention. Stream-of-consciousness writing shows her what she wants to express, and she then hones it into words.

  For Lee, the arts were emancipation. Her childhood experience of death and grief shaped her music, lyrics and drawings. She said, "I spent a lot of time being creative by myself because I was trying to express something that I couldn't say... trying to paint a picture of the inside". Abuse in her teen years later fed her writing, too. By 2007 she said she could finally draw "from all emotions to make music, not just the painful ones". She insisted her work came "from the perspective of somebody who wants to live, wants to be happy and wants to love life".

  Her feelings, she says, are "complicated, all the time", and her songs mix them accordingly. She also draws on her "vivid" dreams, the idea of life after death, and stories of courage in people who step forward after something major. Over time her lyrics became more outspoken. Subjects in Evanescence songs range from loss, abuse and harassment to the music industry, identity, autonomy, nature and solidarity.

  Lee sings in a mezzo-soprano register. A Boston Globe review of "Going Under" called her voice an "ethereal soprano" that moved with power and brightness through the upper registers.

  Her long list of cited influences extends beyond Mozart and Björk to Massive Attack, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Radiohead and Nirvana. It also includes Soundgarden, Pantera, Depeche Mode, Rob Zombie, The Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Metallica and A Perfect Circle.

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• 8. Image, Causes, Honors

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  For the video of "Going Under", Lee designed the clothes she wore herself. She also designed the dress on the cover of The Open Door and the one she wore to the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2011. For the 2004 Grammy Awards she designed a dress and chose the Japanese designer H. Naoto to make it. In 2003 she described her stage style as a mix of "rock, metal and chains and stuff" with "fairies and Victorian clothing, fantasy".

  By 2011 she said she preferred making her own clothes, since it is hard to find exactly what she wants. She likes "asymmetrical things" and "a little bit of chaos". Corsets in the early years, she said, were less about goth style and more about feeling strapped in like a rollercoaster rider. She also guided Evanescence's imagery from the start, including the videos and album artwork. Blender listed her among the hottest women in rock in 2006, and in 2013 NME.com ranked her first for hottest woman in music.

  In 2006, Lee became the American chairperson of Out of the Shadows, an international foundation that teaches people about epilepsy. Her younger brother, Robby, had been diagnosed with the condition. He died in 2018 at age 24 after struggling with severe epilepsy for most of his life. That year she played piano on Veridia's single "I'll Never Be Ready", and she said working on it helped her cope with his death. In 2012 United Cerebral Palsy honored her with its Luella Bennack Award for her work as the foundation's international spokesperson.

  Honors for her music began in June 2008 with the National Music Publishers Association's Songwriter Icon Award. In 2012 she won Best Vocalist at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards and Rock Goddess of the Year at the Loudwire Music Awards. VH1 that year named her one of the top 100 greatest women in music. Her score for Indigo Grey: The Passage won Best Film Score at the Moondance International Film Festival in 2015. In 2017 "Speak to Me" won the Hollywood Music in Media Award for best original song in an independent film.

  Shaun Morgan, Seether's singer, was her partner from 2003 to 2005. In May 2007 she married Josh Hartzler, a therapist. Lee has said she was never formally religious but considers herself a Christian, and that Evanescence is not a Christian band. She has also spoken about anxiety and depression since an early age. Her son was born in July 2014, just months after she announced she was a free and independent artist.

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