Amy Lee Biography

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Amy Lynn Lee (born December 13, 1981 in Riverside, California) is an American singer and songwriter. She is a founding member and lead singer of the Grammy Award winning rock band Evanescence.

She mostly sings alto but can also sing soprano most preferably categorized as a Mezzo-Soprano. She has mentioned Björk, Tori Amos, Soundgarden, Danny Elfman, Nine Inch Nails and Portishead as some of her favorite and most influential artists. She is known by many people worldwide not only because of her music but because of her taste in clothing and various features in magazines.

Lee was born to parents John Lee, a DJ, and Sarah Cargill, a homemaker. She has one brother, Robby, and two sisters, Carrie and Lori. Lee had a third sister, who died in 1987 at the age of three from an unidentified illness. The song “Hello” from the Fallen album was written in her memory.

It is likely that “Like You” from The Open Door was also about her; the lyrics are: ‘I long to be like you, sis.’ She took classical piano lessons for nine years. Her family moved to many places, including Illinois, Kansas, and Florida, but finally settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Evanescence started. She graduated from Pulaski Academy in the year 2000 and also briefly attended Middle Tennessee State University.

She founded the band with Ben Moody. The two met at a youth camp when Lee was playing Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That)” on the piano. Within a month, the pair was playing acoustic sets at Arkansas book stores and coffee houses before recording two EPs, Evanescence EP (in 1998) and then the Sound Asleep EP (in 1999). Another song, “You”, was written by Amy Lee, but was never intended to be released. Rumors, though unsubstatiated, circulated that when “You” was leaked, she asked people to stop distributing the song and its lyrics.

Many, but not all, lyrics websites took down their content for “You”. In 2000, Evanescence recorded the longer EP Origin. This demo contains three songs which were used on the debut album Fallen and was written by Lee and Moody: “Whisper”, “Imaginary”, and “My Immortal”. Whereas “Whisper” and “Imaginary” underwent further modifications before being included on Fallen, “My Immortal” is virtually identical.

A later “band version” of “My Immortal” was made available for download for those who had bought an official version of Fallen through their official web site, but required that a cd checker program also be downloaded for verification before it would play. The “band version” was included on later versions of Fallen, notably the Brazilian and Argentinian Editions.

Fallen and lawsuit: Her first major album Fallen has been certified 6x Platinum , spent 43 weeks in the Billboard Top 10 and has sold over 14 million copies worldwide.

Then on October 22, 2003, guitarist Ben left the band stating the reasons for his departure were “creative differences.” In an interview several months later, Amy said: “We’d gotten to a point that if something didn’t change, we wouldn’t have been able to make a second record.” She also said “We’re finally a real band, not just Ben and I and a few others thrown together” Lee has recently stated in interviews that she was abused, physically and emotionally, by Ben Moody in a previous relationship and regrets trying to stay friends with him for the sake of the band after they broke up.

On December 1, 2005, former Evanescence manager Dennis Rider filed a lawsuit against Lee for breach of contract. The suit claims Rider was prematurely and unjustly terminated from his position as manager of Evanescence.

In return, Lee filed a counter-suit against Rider for “breach of fiduciary duty, sexual assault and battery, professional negligence, currency conversion, and other charges”.

The suit also claims Rider “neglected Lee’s career and business and has focused his efforts on having extramarital affairs, hiding them from his wife, becoming intoxicated during business meetings, physically abusing women and boasting about it, making repeated unwelcome sexual advances toward Lee, receiving fees in excess of what was provided for in his management agreement and using Lee’s corporate credit card to purchase gifts for his mistress.”

Rider’s attorney, Bert Deixler, claimed in a statement that Rider had fully performed all of the duties and obligations owed by the firm under the management agreement, and that he had always conducted himself by the highest professional standards.

Lee was working on the opening theme of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and writing additional music for the film, but the music was rejected. However, Lee has been quoted as saying that the rejected material is “just more great stuff for the new album” .

There was some speculation that the song had been cut and used in several tracks though Lee has stated that this is not true. In fact, the song will not appear on the album in its entirety, but part of it is used as the introduction to “Good Enough”.

The album is entitled The Open Door, confirmed in the May 2006 issue of the music magazine Blender. The album was released on October 3, 2006. The album was leaked on September 4, 2006, almost a month before its release.

Lee has a trademark neo-goth style, marked by her occasional use of gothic make-up and taste for Victorian-styled clothing. She also designs many of her own clothes, including those worn in the music video for Going Under and the dress she wore at the 2004 Grammy awards.

After she designed it she chose Japanese designer H. Naoto to make it for her, although she does sometimes make her own clothes. In concerts, she often wears a corset and fishnets, and used to have a notable piercing on her left eyebrow which is visible on the cover of Fallen.

Many fans praise Lee for her refusal to emulate other celebrities by using sex appeal in her music. She has stated on a number of occasions that she would never flash her breasts or engage in other publicity stunts that would draw attention to herself. In fact, in the music video for “Everybody’s Fool,” she aimed to mock such artists by suggesting celebrities who use sex to appeal to an audience, but are, in fact, merely peddling “truths” (the unifying theme of the music video).

Lee became the American Chairperson for Out of the Shadows in 2006. This organization is an international foundation with the goal of providing education about epilepsy. Lee’s younger brother, Robby, was previously diagnosed with this condition.

The singer also made a brief guest appearance in the music video for Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” in late 2006. As each celebrity featured in the shoot was allowed to choose what they would be doing for the video, Lee chose to appear laying flowers on a grave. Her scene was recorded at Trinity Church in Manhattan, during which she wore a black velvet coat that previously belonged to Tim Burton.

In February 2007, MTV released MTV Unplugged: Korn to television and radio, in which Lee is featured during the song “Freak on a Leash”. The song was also released as the first single from the album. In November 2007, VH1 produced a mockumentary in the style of Behind the Music, titled Rock Band Cometh: The Rock Band Band Story, to promote the video game Rock Band. Lee was one of the celebrity cameos featured on the show.

In June 2008, the National Music Publishers’ Association presented Lee with their 2008 Songwriter Icon Award, which “recognizes outstanding songwriters for their personal achievement”.

For Walt Disney Records’ September 2008 release of Nightmare Revisited, Lee sang a remake of “Sally’s Song”. The album contains new material and covers of songs from the original Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. Lee performed live renditions of “Sally’s Song” during the October 17 Nightmare Before Christmas re-release premiere in Hollywood, California, and for an October 13 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.