EVANESCENCE - "Bring Me To Life" (Patreon)

(#955, 14th June 2003)

Corporate rock, a vignette: the label wanted Evanescence to add a male co-vocalist all through their debut album. The band said no, and so a compromise was met - Amy Lee would be joined by a growly dude only on this first single.

It’s a story which reveals a lot about mainstream rock in the early 00s, not much of it good. The conservatism, for a start, of assuming a woman couldn’t carry a rock band by herself. The grip that nu-metal had over the business, ensuring that the male carpetbagger’s role on “Bring Me To Life” is to bring the Durstish, squat-thrusting rap component in the song up to mandatory levels. The lack of appreciation of the way swooping goth-operatic vocals and agitated rock grind would fit together with no interference required.

But, as happens sometimes, a decision taken for a bad reason led to an interesting outcome. “Bring Me To Life” is an obvious chimera, but the core of it sounds so theatrical anyhow that the contrivance of the two singers just makes it stronger as a piece of melodrama. Far from making the song feel like hard rock, the forced duet means the song works better as pop, partly because the vocal combination gives Evanescence the same basic dynamics as Aqua. A more angstful, more serious Aqua, to be sure, but the game of pealing melodies and gruff, guttural interruptions is the same, and just as immediate.

The more obvious comparison is more recent, though - like t.A.t.U., Evanescence are offering an aesthetic of hyper-intense, hyper-dramatised feeling; taking moments of crisis, doubt and self discovery and turning them into maximalist art. The point of wailed lines like “save me from the nothing I’ve become!”, set amongst the song’s churn and surge of guitars and synthesised strings, isn’t to express something unique or raw. It’s not to capture the nuance or shade of emotion. It’s to take a feeling and paint it as high and wide and shameless as you can.

6 out of 10