Evanescence — “Bring Me To Life”

60 Songs That Explain the '90s

This episode of '60 Songs That Explain the '90s' explores the cultural impact and behind-the-scenes story of Evanescence's hit song 'Bring M

Key takeaways

• The unexpected success of 'Bring Me To Life' was fueled by the tension between artistic vision and corporate interference.

Main topics

• Amy Lee's rise as a leading female artist in male-dominated emo rock

Notable quotes

"We meant well. Okay? I think we can all agree that we meant well."

Conclusion

The episode concludes by celebrating 'Bring Me To Life' not just as a hit

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) Hello, friends. A quick note to say that 60 Songs is now available on YouTube. We made it. Success. That was easy. You can now watch full episodes of this show on YouTube, and you can also check out our new social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok, all using the name 60 Songs that explain the 90s. We have heard your cries of despair and confusion, and we have therefore embraced... various popular online platforms. So watch us on YouTube. Check us out on TikTok and Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter still under the name Harvilla, H-A-R-V-I-L-L-A, but maybe stay out of it. I don't know. We'll put all the links for these in the episode description as well. Thanks for listening and or watching, and we'll see you on the internet. Speaker 1 (0:58) This episode of 60 Speaker 2 (0:59) songs that explain the 90s is presented to you by Nintendo. Some things stick around for a reason. A great song, a favorite movie, a game everyone wants another turn at. The Nintendo Switch 2 system fits right into that tradition. With two controllers included in games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bonanza, and EA Sports FC 26, there's something for every age and every mood. Whether you're at home or on the go, it's easy to keep the good stuff in rotation. Learn more at Nintendo.com slash Nintendo Switch 2. Games and systems sold separately. Games rated E to Speaker 1 (1:39) E10+. Speaker 1 (1:43) We meant well. Okay? I think we can all agree that we meant well. We did the natural, logical, human thing we do with pop stars we love. Our love for her naturally made us protective of her. We worried about her. We got indignant on her behalf. We wanted everyone to just leave her alone. So yeah, we made some assumptions about her personal and professional situation, and amongst ourselves, we devised a few potential solutions. We got the sense that these nasty, malevolent corporate forces had in some way imprisoned her, and we sought, therefore, to free her. We wanted to free Fiona. I Speaker 5 (2:28) certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes. Speaker 5 (2:33) I certainly haven't been spreading myself around. Speaker 1 (2:38) I love the bell there. I love that the bell lines up with the lyrics there, but not exactly. The bong and Fiona's and are perfectly, imperfectly aligned. It is 2005, and they don't want you to hear the new Fiona Apple record. They with an ominous, villainous capital T. It appears to us that the rude, uncultured, disrespectful, empty suits at Epic Records don't see the vision and don't hear a single, and so they have actively, malevolently rejected and shelved and suppressed Fiona Apple's third album. which is called Extraordinary Machine. This is the initial leak of Extraordinary Machine, the song, in which Fiona seems to anticipate, not unhappily, that making and releasing this record is going to be a huge, weird pain in the ass. Speaker 1 (3:44) The tremendous elegance, the deft and mischievous ease with which Fiona Apple sings the words, I'm good at being uncomfortable. Fiona Apple puts out her debut album in 1996. It is called Title, and it includes a song called Criminal. She makes a video for Criminal. No comment. No thank you. Thanks primarily to that video. She wins Best New Artist at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, where Fiona observes, in her acceptance speech, that this world is bullshit. Fiona Apple puts out her second album in 1999. It is called When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts, He Thinks Like a King. What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight, and he'll win the whole thing for he enters the ring. There's no body to batter when your mind is your might. So when you go solo, you hold your own hand, and remember that depth is the greatest of heights. And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land. And if you fall, it won't matter, because you know that you're right. And based on that 90-word poem of an album title, and also based on literally everything else we think we know about this person, Fiona Apple's gonna do whatever the hell she wants, and she'd mostly rather be left alone. Speaker 5 (5:07) I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me. Speaker 1 (5:12) If there was a better way to go, then it would find me. As work begins on her third album in 2002, Fiona Apple re-teams with producer, singer-songwriter, film-scorer, and beloved LA fixture John Bryan, who'd produced Fiona's last record, When the Pawn, etc. John Bryan likes his elaborate whimsy. He likes his horns, his strings, his woodwinds, his bells and whistles and groans and wheezes and whatnot. Bong, etc. I don't imagine I'm the first person to point this out, but a John Bryan production often sounds like a merry-go-round that's got depression. Speaker 5 (5:53) Be kind to me, or treat me mean. Speaker 5 (5:58) I'll make the most of it. I'm an extraordinary machine. Speaker 1 (6:03) Though what really pops there, what strikes you immediately and never leaves you about Extraordinary Machine, the song, is the delightful sauce Fiona Apple puts on the word extraordinary. the ebullient little skip in her step. A merry-go-round that's got depression is like a medium rude thing to say about John Bryan's music. I don't mean that ugly. That's a great sound for him and a great sound for him and Fiona Apple, especially. Now I feel bad. Because I feel bad, let me note here parenthetically that John Bryan co-produced the best song on Kanye West's 2005 album, Late Registration. A song that sounds like a depressed merry-go-round is about to kick your ass up and down the street. Speaker 6 (6:53) That song Speaker 1 (7:04) is called We Major and I love it. Cartoonish triumph. You ever play Super Mario Kart? We major is Rainbow Road in musical form. That's the highest compliment I can pay a piece of recorded music. If you know, you know. On We Major, Kanye shouts out John Bryan by name and everything. John Bryan on the keys right now. So there. So yeah, Fiona Apple's working once again with that guy. And meanwhile, Fiona Apple fans receive a slow, unsteady, and unsatisfying drip of information and misinformation. about her imminent new album, Extraordinary Machine. Fiona plays a few new songs live, which maybe you'd noticed if you're cool enough to go to cool shows in LA, which if you are, then keep it to yourself. Various release dates are informally announced and then abandoned. And eventually we appear to have reached an impasse. Talking to Entertainment Weekly in 2004, John Bryan mentions in passing that Fiona's third album, quote, has been shelved since they finished it in May 2003 due to the label not hearing any obvious singles. End quote. Epic Records appears to have locked... Fiona Apple and her new album in some sort of mythical tower. And that sucks for both her and us because we don't get to hear it. The gallant royal we have been stymied by the dastardly royal they. But what sucks for them is that we have the internet. Here comes the wolf. Get a load of this wolf. Speaker 1 (8:58) This song is called Red, Red, Red. Did you hear the wolf? That is presumably either a sampled wolf or an entirely synthetic, whimsical, melancholy type wolf sound. Though I do relish the image of Fiona Apple in the studio with an actual wolf. The wolf's got headphones on and it's sitting obediently on a stool in front of an old timey microphone. And Fiona points at the wolf and the wolf obediently howls. Maybe it happened like that. That would confirm certain awestruck assumptions I have about how Fiona Apple spends her time. By 2005, the shelved Fiona Apple album Extraordinary Machine has leaked in its entirety onto the internet. Well, okay, the purported entirety of what purports to be the purportedly shelved Fiona Apple album Extraordinary Machine has leaked onto the internet. The facts get a little screwy here, but in any event, yeesh, this Red Red Red song is really doing it for me. Speaker 1 (10:26) I just dig the wolf, man. What are we listening to here precisely? Is this the totally completed and rudely shelved and subsequently heroically leaked Fiona Apple album, Extraordinary Machine? No, probably not. Conventional notions of cause and effect get a little screwy here, but yeah, no, probably not. But we do got 11 new Fiona Apple songs here in a strikingly raw, skeletal, experimental, maybe kind of suspiciously unfinished sounding form. The merry-go-round is extra depressed and extra fixed in a kick your ass up and down the street. Here's Fiona singing the word kill six times in a row. Speaker 5 (11:20) Kill Speaker 1 (11:36) Holy shit, I love Red Red Red. That's the first thing to say clearly. Phenomenal songs. Phenomenal lyrics. Phenomenally sung. The huge adrenaline spike when she belts out the words, trying to get you to. But the last two lines there. And I think if I didn't have to kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill myself doing it, maybe I wouldn't think so much of you. That last line especially gets a little garbled. and overpowered by the production. Maybe because it's a profound artistic statement about alienation or blind rage overpowering compassion or something. And maybe because the song ain't finished yet. Neither is this one. Speaker 1 (12:35) That song is called Get Him Back. That's the leaked Get Him Back. And the tantalizing, not-done essence radiating off that song, the clattering and almost disruptive drums, the goofy, speculative little do-do-do-do-do-do-do whistle-type riff undercutting the delicious menace in Fiona's voice, the less finished Get Him Back sounds to you, the more pleasurable the listening experience. In real time, part of the enormous appeal of the Extraordinary Machine leak is the subversion, the naughtiness, the sense that you're hearing something they, capital T, don't want you to hear. Or more specifically, Fiona Apple wanted you to hear it, but the dastardly capital T they at Epic Records didn't want you to hear it. But now we're sticking it to the man by listening to it, and presumably Fiona herself is vindicated and delighted. Meanwhile, amidst these internet leaks, the Free Fiona movement emerges, in which an international consortium of extra-devoted and indignant Fiona Apple fans hatch a plan to goad Sony Records. parent company of Epic Records, into releasing the rudely, nefariously shelved new Fiona Apple album. This plan involves a petition drive across college campuses nationwide, physical protests outside Sony headquarters in Los Angeles and New York City, and most creatively, a scheme to physically mail Sony Music CEO Andrew Lack a barrage of Apple-themed letters and packages, all mailed ideally on January 24th. To quote FreeFiona.com, which is still up, quote, End quote. Also, and this part is in boldface italics in all caps, quote, I have been advised not to mail real apples for health and liability as well as waste and economic reasons. Please respect our policy. Thanks. End quote. That's good advice. I'm sure some rebellious Fiona Apple fans mailed real apples anyway. And my belated apologies to whoever was working the Sony Music mailroom at that time. I bet it smelled crazy in there. Okay, so now this has become a whole deal. The Free Fiona movement gets major press. The New York Times, MTV News, Howard Stern, and the John Bryan leaks are circulating online. And it sure seems like Extraordinary Machine is being held hostage by an evil, doddering, beef-witted, monolithic record label. Same thing happened to Wilco. Right? The great Chicago art rock band Wilco. Back in 2001, when their evil, doddering label rejected the band's weird, clattering, brilliant album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And it became a whole media deal. A real us versus them, heroic artists versus evil corporate doofuses sort of deal. And Wilco ended up putting out the album on a different label owned by the same parent company. And Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is now an American classic. Or at least it's a classic in my America. Same thing here now with Fiona Apple. Similar thing. Somewhat similar thing. Maybe. Fiona Apple's third album, Extraordinary Machine, finally officially comes out on Epic Records in October 2005. And if you want the truth, I vastly prefer the official version of every song, including Red, Red, Red. I have, in fact, only one complaint. about this new version of Red Red Red. You guessed it, no wolf. Speaker 1 (16:55) Where's the wolf at? Was the wolf unavailable? Otherwise, I am grateful for this slower, softer version of Red, Red, Red, with no cavernous reverb and whatnot to distract you when Fiona sings Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill, Kill. The official version of Extraordinary Machine takes two songs from the leaked John Bryan version. including Extraordinary Machine itself, the title track. It adds one new song called Parting Gift, and it otherwise offers new and frankly superior and demonstrably finished versions of the leaked songs, now produced by Mike Elizondo and Brian Cahew. Mike Elizondo is a Dr. Dre protege who co-wrote 50 Cents Indie Club, for starters. Naturally, lots of people on the internet do the thing where we go song by song and compare the John Bryan leak to the official album version. And what we discover, intriguingly, is that the songs are intact. The songs are unfazed. The new versions of these songs are structurally and lyrically quite similar to the leaks. The official Epic Records release of Extraordinary Machine does not sound watered down or radio-friendly or malevolently compromised. It just sounds like Fiona finished the songs. Speaker 1 (18:33) That part's gone now on the official released version of Get Him Back. That's too bad. So yeah, now a more complicated and nuanced portrait emerges. Here is Fiona Apple on the Charlie Rose show in 2006, talking to guest host Sasha Frere-Jones, the great rock critic Sasha Frere-Jones. Fiona is explaining that whoever leaked The John Bryan songs thought they were freeing them, and by extension, freeing her, but really the leak mortified her, because what she actually wanted was to re-record those songs and get them right. But the label was reluctant to pay for these new recordings, but then the leaks generated so much publicity that her label relented and let her re-record the songs. Or, to simplify things, whoever leaked those songs It was kind of a crappy thing to do, but it helped. Speaker 5 (19:27) I prefer to believe that whoever did it really, really thought, you know, that they were doing something good for me because... Speaker 2 (19:36) Well, it wasn't exactly bad press. Speaker 5 (19:38) It wasn't, no, but it still feels like somebody went through your drawers, you know, and showed them to the class. It just wasn't... I didn't give it. It wasn't done. It wasn't done. So it was a kind of crappy thing to do, I think. Speaker 1 (19:53) But Speaker 2 (19:53) has this album done? Speaker 5 (19:54) But it helped. Speaker 2 (19:55) It helped. Speaker 1 (19:55) Fiona Apple pushes her hands up into the sleeves of her sweaters like I do sometimes, presumably out of nervousness like me. That's interesting. I'm projecting, of course, but wildly projecting one's own emotions onto Fiona Apple is a big part of this whole deal. Fiona also mentions that before the leak. When she asked to re-record the songs, her label told her she could redo one song at a time. And then the label would decide whether to give her money for the next song, and so on. Epic Records is not the outright dastardly villain here, no. But that doesn't make them cool. Finally, Fiona has never hesitated to profess her profound gratitude to the Free Fiona movement. Her whole face brightens up whenever she says the words Free Fiona. Because even if those nice people misread the whole album held hostage by label situation, and even if the Free Fiona movement resulted in some people sending rotting produce through the mail, they did it out of support and concern and love. And it was a lovely thing to do, and it helped. For your reference, The best song on Extraordinary Machine in either iteration is called Oh Well. Speaker 1 (21:29) That's the leaked John Bryan version of Oh Well. I dig the little do-do-do-do horn riff very much, but I may never recover from the delirious viciousness with which Fiona Apple sings the words, What Wasted Unconditional Love. The official version of Oh Well is also magnificent and terrifying. Speaker 6 (21:53) What Wasted Unconditional Love Speaker 6 (22:03) on some of the stuff Speaker 6 (22:10) Oh, well. Speaker 1 (22:12) That deceptive, casual, oh, well, at the end is especially magnificent and terrifying. Also, in a big Fiona Apple profile in The New Yorker in 2020, it says, quote, Looking back on her catalog, she thought that her one-week song might be Please, Please, Please on Extraordinary Machine, which she wrote only because the record company had demanded another track. End quote. Okay, that song makes more sense to me. Now. Speaker 5 (22:49) They lack impact, they're petty. They've been made up already. Speaker 1 (22:54) Please, please, please. No more melodies. Yeah, that makes sense. Notice that even when forced by her record label to write a song she doesn't like, Fiona is still sneaking in elite internal rhymes. They lack impact, they're petty. That's why she's the best. We are trained. Royal we. We are trained as listeners, as fans, as devotees to see our favorite pop stars and rock bands as the heroes and their record labels as the villains. Many fine albums, many fine pop songs are animated by this tension between the noble artists and the corporate shills, the empty suits, the bearers of bad ideas. Pink and Kelly Clarkson, two of our finest early 21st century pop stars, they both quite publicly and valiantly grappled with the famous tyrannical record company

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