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| − | |type = Track}}'''Bring Me to Life''' is the second track on the album ''[[Fallen]]'' |
+ | |type = Track}}'''Bring Me to Life''' is the second track on the album ''[[Fallen]]''. It was written by [[Amy Lee]], [[Ben Moody]] and [[David Hodges]] and produced by [[Dave Fortman]]. "''Bring Me To Life''" features guest vocals from [[Paul McCoy]] of the band 12 Stones. Wind-up released "Bring Me to Life" in 2003 as the lead single from Evanescence's debut studio album, Fallen. The song delivers genres from alternative metal to rap-rock and others. |
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==Background and Release== |
==Background and Release== |
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| − | According to Amy Lee, the song |
+ | According to Amy Lee, the song was inspired by several things, the first being an incident at a restaurant. During an interview from a tour stop in Tulsa she told ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phoenix_(newspaper) The Boston Phoenix]'': "I was inspired to write it when someone said something to me — I didn’t know him, and I thought he might be clairvoyant.[...] I was in a relationship and I was completely unhappy. But I was hiding it. I was being completely abused and I was trying to cover it up; I wouldn’t even admit it to myself. So then I had spoken maybe 10 or 15 words to this guy, who was a friend of a friend. We were waiting for everyone else to show up, and we went into a restaurant and got a table. And he looked at me and said, ‘Are you happy?’ And I felt my heart leap, and I was like, he totally knows what I’m thinking. And I lied, I said I was fine. Anyway, he’s not really clairvoyant. But he ''is'' a sociology major." Lee said in a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VH1 VH1] interview: "Open-mindedness. It's about waking up to all the things you've been missing for so long. One day someone said something that made my heart race for a second and I realized that for months I'd been numb, just going through the motions of life." During an interview with ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(magazine) Blender]'', Lee claimed that she wrote "Bring Me to Life" about her longtime friend, Josh Hartzler, whom she married in 2007. |
"Bring Me to Life" was released on April 22, 2003; it was the first single from the band's debut album, ''[[Fallen]]''. The album's opening track, "[[Going_Under|Going Under]]", was initially planned to be the first single, but the after the release of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredevil:_The_Album ''Daredevil'' soundtrack], it was changed to the album's second single. Wind-up Entertainment president/CEO Ed Vetri, revealed that when the label was pushing the song to the radio, owners stated "We don't play pianos and chicks on rock radio." However, when "Bring Me to Life" was released on the ''Daredevil'' soundtrack, listeners demanded the radio to play the song. The single includes "Farther Away" as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-side_and_B-side B-side] and refers to it as the album version; however, the track order of ''Fallen'' was not finalized at the time of its release and the track was omitted from the album. The first pressing of the Australian single contained the track "Missing" as a B-side, but this was omitted from later pressings and later released as a bonus track on the band's first live album, ''[[Anywhere But Home]]''. Earlier versions of "Bring Me to Life" were recorded and released as demo versions before ''Fallen''<span style="padding-left: 0.1em">'</span>s release; featuring more industrial pieces of music and the absence of [[Paul_McCoy|Paul McCoy]]'s guest vocals. An acoustic version was recorded and released on the ''Bring Me to Life'' DVD. Several other versions of the track have been released, such as remixes, acoustic and altered versions. The live version featured on the ''Anywhere but Home'' DVD contains a piano and vocal solo before the song's intro and features [[John_LeCompt|John LeCompt]] performing guest vocals. |
"Bring Me to Life" was released on April 22, 2003; it was the first single from the band's debut album, ''[[Fallen]]''. The album's opening track, "[[Going_Under|Going Under]]", was initially planned to be the first single, but the after the release of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daredevil:_The_Album ''Daredevil'' soundtrack], it was changed to the album's second single. Wind-up Entertainment president/CEO Ed Vetri, revealed that when the label was pushing the song to the radio, owners stated "We don't play pianos and chicks on rock radio." However, when "Bring Me to Life" was released on the ''Daredevil'' soundtrack, listeners demanded the radio to play the song. The single includes "Farther Away" as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-side_and_B-side B-side] and refers to it as the album version; however, the track order of ''Fallen'' was not finalized at the time of its release and the track was omitted from the album. The first pressing of the Australian single contained the track "Missing" as a B-side, but this was omitted from later pressings and later released as a bonus track on the band's first live album, ''[[Anywhere But Home]]''. Earlier versions of "Bring Me to Life" were recorded and released as demo versions before ''Fallen''<span style="padding-left: 0.1em">'</span>s release; featuring more industrial pieces of music and the absence of [[Paul_McCoy|Paul McCoy]]'s guest vocals. An acoustic version was recorded and released on the ''Bring Me to Life'' DVD. Several other versions of the track have been released, such as remixes, acoustic and altered versions. The live version featured on the ''Anywhere but Home'' DVD contains a piano and vocal solo before the song's intro and features [[John_LeCompt|John LeCompt]] performing guest vocals. |
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Revision as of 10:08, 21 January 2013
For the music video for this song, see: Bring Me To Life (music video)
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Bring Me to Life is the second track on the album Fallen. It was written by Amy Lee, Ben Moody and David Hodges and produced by Dave Fortman. "Bring Me To Life" features guest vocals from Paul McCoy of the band 12 Stones. Wind-up released "Bring Me to Life" in 2003 as the lead single from Evanescence's debut studio album, Fallen. The song delivers genres from alternative metal to rap-rock and others.
Background and Release
According to Amy Lee, the song was inspired by several things, the first being an incident at a restaurant. During an interview from a tour stop in Tulsa she told The Boston Phoenix: "I was inspired to write it when someone said something to me — I didn’t know him, and I thought he might be clairvoyant.[...] I was in a relationship and I was completely unhappy. But I was hiding it. I was being completely abused and I was trying to cover it up; I wouldn’t even admit it to myself. So then I had spoken maybe 10 or 15 words to this guy, who was a friend of a friend. We were waiting for everyone else to show up, and we went into a restaurant and got a table. And he looked at me and said, ‘Are you happy?’ And I felt my heart leap, and I was like, he totally knows what I’m thinking. And I lied, I said I was fine. Anyway, he’s not really clairvoyant. But he is a sociology major." Lee said in a VH1 interview: "Open-mindedness. It's about waking up to all the things you've been missing for so long. One day someone said something that made my heart race for a second and I realized that for months I'd been numb, just going through the motions of life." During an interview with Blender, Lee claimed that she wrote "Bring Me to Life" about her longtime friend, Josh Hartzler, whom she married in 2007.
"Bring Me to Life" was released on April 22, 2003; it was the first single from the band's debut album, Fallen. The album's opening track, "Going Under", was initially planned to be the first single, but the after the release of the Daredevil soundtrack, it was changed to the album's second single. Wind-up Entertainment president/CEO Ed Vetri, revealed that when the label was pushing the song to the radio, owners stated "We don't play pianos and chicks on rock radio." However, when "Bring Me to Life" was released on the Daredevil soundtrack, listeners demanded the radio to play the song. The single includes "Farther Away" as a B-side and refers to it as the album version; however, the track order of Fallen was not finalized at the time of its release and the track was omitted from the album. The first pressing of the Australian single contained the track "Missing" as a B-side, but this was omitted from later pressings and later released as a bonus track on the band's first live album, Anywhere But Home. Earlier versions of "Bring Me to Life" were recorded and released as demo versions before Fallen's release; featuring more industrial pieces of music and the absence of Paul McCoy's guest vocals. An acoustic version was recorded and released on the Bring Me to Life DVD. Several other versions of the track have been released, such as remixes, acoustic and altered versions. The live version featured on the Anywhere but Home DVD contains a piano and vocal solo before the song's intro and features John LeCompt performing guest vocals.
Recording and Composition
"Bring Me to Life" was written by Amy Lee, Ben Moody and David Hodges for their first studio album Fallen. Recording work for Fallen started at Ocean Studios in Burbank, California, where most of "Bring Me to Life" was recorded, prior to full album production. The song was mixed by Jay Baumgardner in his studio, NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood, on an SSL 9000 J.[ A 22-piece string section was recorded in Seattle by Mark Curry. "Bring Me to Life" was mixed at the Newman Scoring Stage and Bolero Studios, both in Los Angeles. The orchestra parts were arranged by David Hodges and David Campbell. During an interview, Lee recalled that during the recording process of the song it was said to her that the song must to have male vocals: "It was presented to me as, 'You're a girl singing in a rock band, there's nothing else like that out there, nobody's going to listen to you. You need a guy to come in and sing back-up for it to be successful.'"
According to the sheet music published by Alfred Music Publishing on the website Musicnotes.com, "Bring Me to Life" is a rock, alternative metal, hard rock, chamber pop and gothic metal song set in a common time and performed in a moderate tempo of 96 beats per minute. It is written in the key of E minor and Lee's vocal range for the song runs from the note A3 to D5. In the song, Paul McCoy sings the lines "Wake me up/ I can't wake up/ Save me!" in a rap style. St. Petersburg Times' Brian Orloff called the song a "...boffo hit" in which Lee sang the lines "'Call my name and save me from the dark' over surging guitars." Ann Powers from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote: "'Bring Me to Life,' with its lyrical drama and crunchy guitars, branded the band as overdone nu-metal." Kristi Turnquist of The Oregonian called the song a power ballad. Joe D'Angelo from MTV wrote that the "...toothy riffs" of songs like "Going Under" and "Bring Me to Life" might suggest that "...Nobody's Home" (2005) from Avril Lavigne's second studio album Under My Skin will sound like "an Evanescence song with Avril, not Amy Lee, on vocals."
Rolling Stone's Kirk Miller wrote that: "...thanks to the song's digital beats, clean metal-guitar riffs, scattered piano lines and all-too-familiar mix of rapping and singing", "it was similar to Linkin Park's material. Nick Catucci of The Village Voice found "...piano tinkles, Lee's breathless keen, dramatic pauses, guitars like clouds of locusts, [and] 12 Stones singer Paul McCoy's passing-12-kidney-stones guest vocals." Vik Bansal of musicOMH compared Evanescence's own song "Going Under" with "Bring Me to Life", noting their similarity to Linkin Park's material. Lee said, during an interview with MTV News: "Basically, we go through life every day, kind of doing the same thing, going through the motions, and nothing phases us for the most part. Then one day something happens that wakes [you] up and makes [you] realize that there's more to life than just feeling nothing, feeling numb. It's as if [you've] never felt before and just realized there's this whole world of emotion or meaning that [you've] never seen before. It's just like, 'Wow, I've been asleep all this time.'"
Chart Performance
"Bring Me to Life" peaked within the top 10 of more than 15 countries, and within the top 20 of several other countries, making it the band's most successful single to date. It was certified Platinum in 2003 for selling more than one million copies in the United States. It topped the Billboard Alternative Songs and Pop 100 charts and peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 . It also peaked at number four on the Adult Pop Songs chart. The song initially peaked within the Christian rock charts as well, because its lyrics were interpreted as a call for new life in Jesus Christ by several listeners. "Bring Me To Life" charted at number 73 on Billboard's Best of the 2000s Rock Songs Chart, the only song by a female-led band on that chart. The song topped the charts of Australia, Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom. It peaked within the top 5 of Austria, Canada, France, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands, and Sweden. On the ARIA Singles Chart, "Bring Me to Life" peaked at number one where it stayed for six weeks.
"Bring Me to Life" charted within the top 20 of every other country of its release. The song spent four weeks at number one in the United Kingdom and helped Fallen reach number one on the UK Albums Chart. The song also topped the European Hot 100 chart. On June 4, 2011, the song returned to the top of the UK Rock Singles Chart, eight years after its release, remaining at number one for two weeks, on June 11, 2011 to June 25, 2011. It fell to number two, remaining there for three weeks, and on July 17, 2011, "Bring Me to Life" returned to number one again and remained there for three weeks. The song remained within the top 10 into October 2011. As of October, 2011, the song has sold more than 511,500 copies in the United Kingdom.
Live Performances
Evanescence performed "Bring Me to Life" as part of the set-lists of the Fallen and The Open Door tours. The band performed the song on August 13, 2003 in Chicago during their Nintendo Fusion Tour. During the performance, former Evanescence guitarist John LeCompt replaced McCoy during the song. According to Blair R. Fischer: "The guitarist did an adequate job imitating McCoy while he laid down the song's fiery, Iron Maiden-esque riff." The band performed "Bring Me to Life" in Wantagh, New York on July 23, 2004. According to Joe D'Angelo from MTV News: "...the massive popularity of the song was a smart set-list assembly that helped the crowd respond in kind." The song was performed on November 21, 2007 at WaMu Theater.
Evanescence performed "Bring Me to Life" at the Webster Hall in New York City in September 2003. During the performance, Lee wore an Alice in Wonderland dress covered with scrawled words, including the words Dirty, Useless, Psycho and Slut. She explained her reasons for wearing the dress. On her previous visit to New York City, Lee had met a DJ from the radio station K-Rock, who had made what she called horrible comments about the pleasure he had derived from the picture of her face on the cover of Fallen. She had felt too ashamed to say anything, so she decided to respond through the dress, which represented something innocent that had been tainted. The band performed "Bring Me to Life" during their concert at The Great Saltair on October 25, 2006. Lee wore red and black, with a skirt. She was called a magnet of the night by the Deseret News' reviewer Larry D. Curtis. Other performances of the song were in Magna, Utah in October 2006, and the Air Canada Centre in January 2007. The band also played the song at a secret gig in New York City on November 4, 2009. During their concert at War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee on August 17, 2011, Evanescence performed "Bring Me to Life" to promote their third album, Evanescence. They also performed the song during the 2011 Rock in Rio festival on October 2, 2011. While reviewing a concert by the band, Caroline Sullivan wrote "Slowly raising her arms during Bring Me to Life's thunderous, strobe-lit fade-out, she's missing only a chariot."
Credits and Personal
Credits are adapted from Fallen liner notes.[10]
- Amy Lee - writing, piano, keyboards, vocals
- Ben Moody - writing, producing, guitars, percussion
- David Hodges - writing, piano, keyboards, string arrangements
- Josh Freese - drums
- Dave Fortman - producing
- Francesco DiCosmo - bass guitar
- David Campbell - additional string arrangements
- Graeme Revell - string arrangements, orchestral conduction
Lyrics
Fallen/Daredevil Soundtrack version
How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core where I've become so numb
Without a soul, my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
(Save me from the nothing I've become)
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
(Save me from the nothing I've become)
I've been living a lie
There's nothing inside
Bring me to life
Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling
Only you are the life among the dead
All this time, I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Without thought, without voice, without a soul
Don't let me die here
There must be something more
Bring me to life
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
(Save me from the nothing I've become)
I've been living a lie
There's nothing inside
Bring me to life
Demo Versions
How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core
Where I've become so numb
Without a soul
My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love - darling
Only you are the life among the dead
Bring me to life
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Bliss Mix
How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core
Where I've become so numb
Without a soul
My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling
Only you are the life among the dead
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Don't let me die here
Bring me to life
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Acoustic Version
How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core
Where I've become so numb
Without a soul
My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Bring me to life
Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling
Only you are the life among the dead
Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run
Before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I've become
Bring me to life
Bring me to life