EVANESCENCE's AMY LEE: 'I Didn't Start Out On This Path Because I Wanted Fame'

In a new interview with Andy Hall of the Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3, EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee was asked if there are lessons she's learned over time, either on the creative side or on the business side, that would have been especially valuable around the time of the release of the band's debut album, 2003's "Fallen". She responded (hear audio below): "Yes. Absolutely. I don't even know how to go down that list, it's so big. More than anything, I was really young when we started and just unsure of myself — as a person, as a musician, as anything. And to put yourself up, and things really did rocket launch for us quickly when we made that album, to be in the spotlight and to have people looking at you, talking at you, about you, all of that, becoming famous like that, that was hard for me.

"I didn't start out on this path because I wanted fame," she continued. "I'm a pretty introverted person naturally. And that might have been a lot easier for me if I knew from the outside, for my future self, it was okay to just be myself. And as much as I felt like I would have said that to you back then — that this is what's important — it's really hard to put it into action, especially when you're young. To just be confident and just believe — truly believe — that I belonged where I was. Because for the first few years of being in this business, it was a constant fight within myself to feel worthy and to feel like I was good enough to be standing on the stages that I was standing on. The perspective of just making it through all those concerts and also seeing the much more important, deeper aspect, which is the connection made with people and the way that the music can touch people and inspire people and move people in a positive way, even when it's born out of pain — especially when it's born out of pain, because they've had that pain too. Making that connection is so much more powerful than if I mess up a note on the piano. I think that that perspective would have been good for me, for sure."

EVANESCENCE's long-awaited new album, "The Bitter Truth", will arrive later in the coming months.

This past August, EVANESCENCE released a new single, "Use My Voice", which was written to celebrate the power of speaking out in order to promote more justice in the world. The track, featuring contributions from THE PRETTY RECKLESS's Taylor Momsen and HALESTORM's Lzzy Hale, was chosen by HeadCount in the USA to encourage voters to register, check their registration, or find out about their remote voting options amid the COVID-19 pandemic at UseMyVoice.org.

EVANESCENCE's new music is being produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who also worked on 2011's self-titled LP.

EVANESCENCE spent much of the last two years recording and touring in support of 2017's "Synthesis", which contained some of the band's best-loved songs — as well as a couple of new ones — reinvented with full orchestra over a deep electronic landscape.