Evanescence Cd Fallen

[Samantha Figueredo]

To celebrate the its 10th anniversary, Fallen was reissued on limited edition purple vinyl on March 4, 2013.[1] On its 20th anniversary, the album was released as a special edition with bonus material on November 17, 2023.[2]

After Evanescence was formed by Amy Lee and Ben Moody in 1995, the band released three EPs and one demo CD. In January 2001, they signed with Wind-up Records, their first major label.[3] Composing Fallen took eight years[4]; in a MTV interview, Ben Moody said that he wrote with Lee "maybe two or three times in eight years."[3] Amy said that she and Moody never sat down and wrote together,[3][5] and instead would combine their respective parts in songs. From the start, Lee would only ever write music by herself, considering it a vulnerable process and feeling disrespected by Moody.[6] Some songs were written when they were 15 and 16 years old.[7] Half of the album was written in two years during artist development[7] before Dave Fortman was brought in to produce it.[8] Most of Lee's writing on Fallen was inspired by a three-year abusive relationship she was in with an unnamed boyfriend.[9]

The album was recorded in California at Track Record Studios, NRG Recording Studios, Ocean Studios, and Conway Recording Studios. Songs were recorded as demos before the recording sessions, and "My Immortal", "Imaginary", and "Whisper" appeared on earlier Evanescence recordings.[10] Amy expressed that these songs were "done right, now that we have the money to or the backing from the label" on Fallen.[11] The album was recorded and mixed from late August to early December 2002.[4] Recording began at Ocean Studios in Burbank, where "Bring Me To Life" was recorded. This recording was later used for the Daredevil soundtrack.[11] For that song, Jay Baumgardner used a mix at his studio (NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood) on an SSL 9000 J. Drum tracks were recorded at Ocean Studios, with Josh Freese playing on selected songs to click tracks of stereo guitars and vocals.[4]

Dave Fortman said that for the rest of the drums, he used a D112 on the inside of the kick drum, a U47 on the outside, and an NS-10 speaker as an outside mic. The producer used 414 microphones on the ride and hi-hat cymbals, recording the drums on two-inch tape on a Studer recorder and inputting the results into Pro Tools. The guitars (Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, Mesa Boogie, Marshall Amplification) for the album were cut at Mad Dog Studios in Burbank with an old Mesa Boogie guitar cabinet. Lee's vocals, pianos and the background vocal by the Millennium Choir were recorded at NRG Recording Studios. The orchestral parts were arranged by David Campbell and David Hodges, except for "My Immortal", which was arranged by composer Graeme Revell.[4] Fallen was mixed over a two-week period at Conway Recording Studios in North Hollywood and mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound in New York City.[4] Although Amy wrote the piano parts on the album, David is credited for having played them.[12]

Amy expressed that the making of Fallen was stressful because "we had to remember [that] at least one big single had to be totally radio-friendly. And I'm really ready not to think that way."[5] According to her, the album "leaned toward what [Ben] wanted a lot of the time",[13] as he had a more commercial mindset,[14][3] with Moody saying in a 2003 interview that he focused on making it "as accessible as possible, to as many people as possible".[15] She said she wasn't allowed to use any organ on the album, because Ben "didn't like it."[16]

Wind-up Records initially refused to release the album unless Evanescence hired a rapper as a full-time member and have him featured on 8 out of 11 tracks on Fallen.[17][18][19][20] Amy refused to do it, and later reluctantly agreed to the compromise of adding a male vocal on only the lead single "Bring Me to Life".[7][21] The label wanted a male vocalist in order to make the music marketable,[17] as a female voice on rock radio was a rarity, and the song was considered for airplay only after there was a male vocal on it.[7] The label's president Ed Vetri revealed that when the label introduced the song to radio, radio programmers rejected it, saying, "A chick and a piano? Are you kidding? On rock radio?"[22] Some program directors would hear the female voice and piano at the start of the song and turn it off without listening to the rest of the song.

Originally, the band version of "My Immortal" would have been the fourth track, but Wind-Up preferred the Origin version with added strings instead.[23][24] Amy expressed she hates that version, a demo from 1999,[24] recorded with a MIDI piano when she was 17 years old at the radio station where her father worked in, which they had to break into late at night after everyone had finished their work, because they couldn't afford a real studio session.[25][23] When the song became a single, the band chose the version they originally recorded for the album, which is the "band version", with strings arranged by David Campbell.[23]

The production cost was estimated to be around $250,000 by Dave Fortman, and much of the budget was used to record a real orchestra in Seattle that Amy fought to have in many of the songs, whereas an electronic recreation would have been cheaper.[26][27]

Fallen has sold well over 15 million copies worldwide and about 5 and a half million in the US alone. The album debuted at #7 and has not fallen below #39 to date on the Billboard Album Chart. The album stayed in the top 10 for 43 non-consecutive weeks.

The CD was re-released in January 2004 with the band version of "My Immortal" as a hidden track. Fallen was Grammy nominated for Album of the Year in 2004. Guitarist John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray had co-writing credits on Fallen before they were hired for tour after Fallen was completed.[28] John has credits on "Taking Over Me" and Rocky has credits on "Tourniquet", which is a cover of the original version "My Tourniquet" that he wrote on guitar for his band Soul Embraced.[17][29] The latest album features the 12th song My Immortal (Band Version) but does not state this song on the track-listing.

The first single released from the album is "Bring Me to Life", which was commercially released on February 7, 2003. It was written by Amy Lee, Ben Moody and David Hodges, and most of it was recorded at Ocean Studios in Burbank, California for the Daredevil soundtrack.[4] It went on to peak at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The second single, "Going Under", was released on June 6, 2003. The music video for it was filmed in Berlin, Germany in May 2003. "Imaginary" was released as the commercial third single in Spain only on November 13, 2003. "My Immortal" was released as the third commercial single worldwide on October 20, 2003. It peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

"Everybody's Fool" was released on April 19, 2004, as the fourth and final commercial single off Fallen. The music video for it was directed by Philipp Stlzl, the same director of the "Bring Me to Life" and "Going Under" music videos.

"The point of this whole record and band is to let people know they're not alone in dealing with bad feelings or pain or anything that they go through. That's life and that's human. They're not alone, and we're going through it, too."[32][33]

[The album's message is] just honestly about human emotion. It's about our life experiences and the things that we've felt and what we've been through. We're just sharing them to be an outlet for other people so that they know they're not alone and that we've been through some crap too.[11]

There are also time when it has been a bit of an albatross [with the success of Fallen]... A lot of the songs on that album were written when I was 15 years old. And when they were released, straight away people thought they knew me.[34]

According to Amy Lee, "Going Under" is about a previous emotionally and physically damaging relationship: "And when you're at the end of your rope, when you're at the point where you realize something has to change, that you can't go on living in the situation that you're in. It's cool. It's a very strong song." "Going Under" was Fallen's second single. "Bring Me to Life" is a nu metal-rap rock song written in common time and performed at a moderate tempo (96 beats per minute). Written by Lee, Ben Moody, and David Hodges, the song was conceived when an acquaintance asked Lee in a restaurant if she was happy in her current relationship. When Lee realized that she was not, the lyrics "wake me up inside" were inspired. The singer confirmed that the song was about longtime friend Josh Hartzler, whom she married in 2007.

"Everybody's Fool", also by Lee, Moody, and Hodges, is about celebrities with false images. In a VH1 interview, Lee said: "My little sister was really getting into these, I don't want to offend anyone, but like really fake, cheesy, slutty female cracker-box idols, and it really pissed me off. She started dressing like them and she was like 8 years old. So I gave her the talk and I wrote a song." "My Immortal", a piano rock ballad written by Moody with a bridge by Lee, is based on a short story Moody wrote; in the album booklet he dedicates the song to his grandfather, Bill Holcomb. "Haunted" is also based on a Moody short story which was posted on the Evanescence fan forum, EvBoard.com.[35] "Tourniquet" was originally written for Christian death metal band Soul Embraced, which included future Evanescence member Rocky Gray, but Evanescence covered and reworked it.[17][20] "Imaginary", a song from Evanescence's 1998 self-titled EP, was originally intended as Fallen's fourth single.[36] The midtempo "Taking Over Me"'s lyrics are about Lee being consumed by another person's obsession with her, secretly written about her future husband, Josh Hartzler.[20] "Hello" remembers one of Lee's sisters, who died of an illness in 1987 at age three.[9] The lyrics of "My Last Breath" explore emotional survival, with the lack of air a metaphor, inspired by the events of 9/11.[20] "Whisper" features the Millennium Choir singing in Latin against muted guitars, but the choir is credited in the booklet by each individual vocalist rather than by the choir's official name.

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