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"Swimming Home"
Evanescence (album)
Released October 11, 2011
Length 3:41
Producers Nick Raskulinecz
Label Wind-up Records
Chronology
'Evanescence'
"Never Go Back" "Swimming Home" "A New Way to Bleed"

"Swimming Home" is the last song on the self-titled third studio album, Evanescence. It was one of the songs that got reworked from the 2010 Lillywhite sessions, along with "Made of Stone" and "Secret Door".[1]

Background[]

The song was a last-minute addition on the album,[2] with "Secret Door" originally being the closing track.[3]

Amy explains in an interview that this song is about passing over to the next life:[4]

"I love the song, I think that it expresses a little bit of a new emotion for me, for Evanescence. Because it's sad, it's goodbye, it's sort of from the other side of the song before. It's like from the person's perspective that's moving on to the next life. But it's peaceful, it's an acceptance of that giant crazy thing that fascinates me, that I wonder about and think about. And it's like, life and death and what comes after, you know and what does it all mean. So it's that acceptance and peaceful feeling like the calm after the storm."

Amy made a passionate comment on this song in a Songfacts interview:[5]

One song that is very different for an Evanescence song that I love very much is called "Swimming Home." It's programming and keyboards with an atmosphere of sounds from another world, basically, and it's not in a minor key. It's very simple, and there's something so beautiful and freeing about listening to it and playing it because it's free from all the rules. I find myself saying rules, and I try my best to break them. I think that song was one of the successes where I broke the rules and I made something really great that I just loved all the more for being different.

It's broad. You can apply it to so many specific situations, but I was literally just living in a dream world and singing about how on the deepest inside...

I'm not going to be able to say this right. I know I sound like I'm on the cusp of saying something really beautiful, but it's going to come out really dumb. I'll just say how much I loved the production and I'll stop myself there. You're going to have to just trust me. It's definitely got some Björk to it.

Will "Science" Hunt, the song's co-writer, is credited for additional programming.[6] It should also be noted that this is the only song on the standard edition of Evanescence to include harp.

The song was submitted for the soundtrack of the 2008 Japanese animated fantasy movie Ponyo, but wasn't accepted.[7]

Carrie Lee, one of Amy's sisters, wrote a story based on the song for the issue #3 of Evanescence's comics Echoes from the Void, published in August 2022. Amy said the song was written while Carrie lived with her in New York. Carrie's room was next to the home studio and they both were "dreaming of mermaids and underwater worlds" at the time.[8]

Lyrics[]

Way down
I’ve been way down
Underneath this skin
Waiting to hear my name again

I’m sorry, nothing can hold me
I adore you still
But I hear them calling
And nothing can hold me

Way down [Do you really want me?]
All the way down [Do you really want me?]
I will hear your voice [Do you really want me?]
But I’ll no longer understand [No one's really loved me]

I’m sorry, nothing can hold me
I adore you still
But I hear them calling

I was looking to the sky
When I knew I’d be swimming home
And I cannot betray my kind
They are here, it’s my time

I’m sorry, nothing can hold me
I adore you still
But I hear them calling, calling
And nothing can hold me


References[]

  1. In 2015, Amy confirmed that only three songs from the Lillywhite sessions, referred to as Broken Record, made the cut on the final album.
  2. "Evanescence - Bio". Evanescence.com.
  3. Told by Amy in a Q&A session in Milan in September 2011.
  4. "NME: Evanescence Track By Track (Part 2)". October 14, 2011. YouTube.
  5. "Amy Lee of Evanescence - Songwriter Interviews". October 13, 2016. Songfacts.
  6. Evanescence (liner notes), 2011.
  7. "Evanescence's Amy Lee". Bizarre: 23. January 2012.
  8. Pereira, Sergio (July 25, 2022). "Evanescence's Amy Lee Discusses Her Band's Comic, Echoes from the Void". CBR.


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