Evanescence

 Seemingly out of nowhere, Evanescence burst onto the airwaves in early 2003. Radio stations were bombarded by requests for “Bring Me to Life” and “My Immortal.” This small quartet from Little Rock, Arkansas has since hit triple platinum and been nominated for five Grammies, including best new artist. Lead vocalist Amy Lee and lead guitarist Ben Moody met in their early teens and soon began singing and songwriting together. It wasn’t until the late 90’s the band was complete and emerged as Evanescence.

 Like many popular songs meant to target a young audience, “My Immortal” is a song that looks like a monologue of despair and sadness. Those who love the song probably know that even without reading the lyrics, one can sense the sadness due to the power of Amy Lee’s voice and the arrangement of the song. The deep, soul-searching voice of Lee seems to represent the agony of a lonely heart and the sadness of a grief-stricken soul.

 And evidently it’s true. The song starts (in the first stanza) with depressing human conditions like “tired”, “childish fears”, lingering sadness (‘Cause your presence still lingers here/And it won’t leave me alone.)  The second stanza seems to escalate the sadness by adding despair (and hopelessness) with “These wounds won’t seem to heal/This pain is just too real/There’s just too much that time cannot erase.”  The chorus somehow releases a solution but one will have the feeling that it is an imagined resolution, sort of like trying to find solution to real problems in illusions. One wonders why in the first stanza, the speaker of the song wants to move away from her lover yet in the chorus she tries to protect and comfort him.

Here is where it gets gory and sick.

 In the next stanza we are introduced to a terrible loss. Some have suggested he just left but I am suspicious about these lyrics:  “You used to captivate me/By your resonating light/Now I'm bound by the life you left behind/Your face it haunts/My once pleasant dreams/Your voice it chased away/All the sanity in me.” What’s going on here? That’s a good question. I think he died.  There is a strong indication that the beloved died – reason being that the title is “My Immortal”. It is a comfort that many bereaved people do: to keep people you love in your heart despite the absence. Whatever that is, it is a legitimate human comfort used by bereaved people. And I’m saying that it is bad.  What I am saying is that it is not the only comfort of a bereaved.

 The last stanza, gives us the idea that the speaker is trying hard to give herself hope: “ I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone/But though you're still with me/I've been alone all along”. Yet she is aware that the comfort she puts herself in – that he is her immortal – is challenged by reality; and that she no longer possesses him because he’s gone.

 Teenage girls and boys can identify with this loss at breakups, and it’s a pretty good song to make one cry. But I think the main point of the song is deeper than a break up: because it talks about a loss. It’s about losing somebody you love and trying to convince yourself that he/she will be forever with you.

 It’s good to know that Christ has a special plan for those who want to spend immortality with Him and the people they love. Although a non-Christian band like Evanescence majestically articulates the sorrow of loss, yet I think it is Christianity that offers the solution. Jesus said in John 14:1-3 "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

 It would be great to share the Gospel to those people we love so that we won’t be a hopeless song like “My Immortal”. Five years ago, my dad and my wife’s dad both died in a span of 5 months. We were grief-stricken but not hopeless coz we know that Christ is eternal, that Christ bought them with His precious blood to spend eternity with Him.

 PS. Look at one of the band members’ comment on Christian music: “In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, April 18, 2003, [Ben]Moody said, “We’re actually high on Christian charts, and I’m like, what the [beep] are we doing there?”