Evanescence’s Amy Lee has long had a love-hate relationship with one of the band’s biggest hits, “My Immortal.” But she’s since found a new appreciation for it in the 20 years since its release.
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“My Immortal” was released in December 2003 as the third single off the band’s blockbuster debut album, Fallen. The song was co-written by Lee and guitarist and Evanescence co-founder Ben Moody when they were merely teenagers. Moody wrote the lyrics while Lee leaned heavily into the composition and contributed the bridge.
The piano ballad tells a devastating tale about a soul that’s passed on, but won’t relinquish its hold on the living. When you cried, I’d wipe away all of your tears/When you’d scream, I’d fight away all of your fears/And I held your hand through all of these years/But you still have all of me, Lee sings with achingly beautiful vocals.
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“My Immortal” was a worldwide hit, peaking inside the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hitting No. 1 in the United Kingdom, Greece and others. Despite its popularity, Lee admitted that she didn’t always feel a strong connection to it. “It didn’t mean a lot to me in the beginning,” Lee told American Songwriter. “That was a song I got sick of. There were a couple of years where I was like, ‘I’m not playing the song tonight. I don’t want to. I’m tired of it.'”
She cites the fact that Moody wrote the lyrics as the main reason why it didn’t resonate with her as much as other songs in their catalog that she’d written. “That one’s not my lyrics,” she explained. “For the most part, that was Ben’s baby.” However, Lee has a newfound appreciation for the song, as she now uses it as a love letter to the fans who’ve supported Evanescence for the past 20 years.
“It is the song before the last song in our set every night and it’s the moment where I say thank you for our time and being here,” she expressed. “I really sing the words to the fans. It really means something to me now that it couldn’t have meant then because they weren’t there. It feels like it was always about that now.”
Photo by Travis Shinn/Courtesy of Shore Fire Media
