Ever since the eighties reached its zenith
of straight-faced lameness and, in reaction, cynicism became the new fashion of
youth culture, irony has become a tool we use to protect ourselves with. When
we like something that’s considered overly sincere, unsophisticated or
unfasionable in any way, we can’t help but feel the invisible aura of judgement
diffusing from the souls of our closest companions, and sometimes we disguise our
beloved unpopulars as ‘guilty pleasures’ or things that we only like ‘ironically’.
This was the sort of thing I did for years when it came to things like
Rhinestone Cowboy, or Carry On films, or Sailor Moon. But as I’ve gotten a lot
older, I’ve taken aboard the now-obvious philosophy of people like heroic demigod
Grimes, who openly eschews the idea of guilty pleasures and liking things ‘ironically’,
and simply likes whatever she dares to like without fear of reproach, whether it’s
Dolly Parton, Beyoncé, Insane Clown Posse, or anything else that insecure music
nerds are destined to hate.
Evanescence are a band that falls
gracelessly into this category, and they're probably one of the few bands I really, honestly am still super into that I feel a decent degree of shame for liking. Now a long-forgotten relic of the 2000s nu-metal
dark age, Evanescence leapt on the pop-metal bandwagon with a combination of overproduced, chart-friendly grooves and occasional death riffs with weepy
gothic melodies, and I was a huge fan of theirs back in my early teens, when I
was an archetypal member of their core demographic. As I grew up, I couldn’t
help but notice that my love for Evanescence didn’t shed away and die like most
of the things I blindly adored before I grew stronger critical faculties, and
now I can’t help but feel like I’m admitting to having a serious
psychological condition when I tell people that I think they’re awesome. I
mean, I can understand the aversion that people have towards them; most people
who like metal with any modicum of sincerity will be sickened by the castrated,
plasto-pop version of the genre that the band encapsulate, and people who
require their music to be deeply meaningful will be put off by the mawkish, adolescent, I-want-to-die (quote) attitude of their lyrics and image.
However, as a genuine fan of decently-made
pop music, which will forever attract the derision of the music lovers I
choose to associate with, I can see the appeal of a band which are pure pop, as
in verse-chorus-verse, catchy-but-shallow pop, with a soft-metal centre and quasi-gothic
lyrics as told through the mind of a fifteen-year-old girl. It’s a winning
formula, as far as I’m concerned. There were a gazillion bands at the time who were
also chart-hitting nu-metal with female vocals, such as Flyleaf, Lacuna Coil,
Nightwish, Within Temptation, etc, etc – all of which share a place in my heart
– but, for some reason, Evanescence outshone all of them and creeps the closest
towards the abstract threshold of genuinely ‘good’ music, at least in my
opinion. The biggest reason for this is probably Amy Lee, the frontwoman who
won the hearts of a million mopey virginal teenagers about a decade ago. Her emotive,
Elfmanesque piano melodies, her voice like a cascade of steaming hot tears, and
her believably genuine weird-girl-at-high-school presence all gave Evanescence
an indescribable completeness that I happily bought into.
Well, that and the fact that they had some
decent bangers, as well, since nothing speaks volumes for a band’s credibility
than a selection of well-made tunes. ‘Bring Me to Life’ was the barnstorming
post-90s-edgy anthem that put them on the map, but there’s also the irresistible
groove of ‘Sweet Sacrifice’, the angsty anti-superficiality of ‘Everybody’s Fool’, the orchestral grandeur of ‘Call Me When You’re Sober’, or just ‘Going Under’, for fuck’s sake. But if there’s any Evanescence song that actually reaches
the glorious achievement of being something that I consider objectively good, even if you haven’t the tolerance for the dubious quality of
the rest of their stuff, it’s got to be ‘My Immortal’. My Immortal is an actually,
seriously, no-joke excellent song. Written entirely by long-gone band member Ben
Moody (although Lee wrote the bridge, which is also pretty great), it’s a
straight-up, heart-clutching piano ballad about a complete inability to come to
terms with loss, being swallowed entirely by overwhelming grief, losing the
frail remnants of your sanity, and never, ever, ever being able to get over it.
I love My Immortal because it was a smash hit, a bona fide chart-topper, about a
sadness with no redemption, without any possibility of hope – just unremitting,
ceaseless grief. Some people might find it sentimental, but I think it’s absolutely beautiful
– beautiful melodies, tenderly sang, and produced with surprisingly subtle
perfection. It’s also the least nu-metal Evanescence song, which probably helps
its case, although there’s an unnecessary but still kinda-great ‘band version’
to remedy that, if you really want.
Despite their commercialised, cheese-bloated
place in the grand history of the American pop industry, and the fact that they’re
often thrown, unfairly I’d say, into the same classification as genuine shite like
Nickelback, Evanescence definitely have something about them, at least compared
to the other bands of the time who found success with similar sorts of melodic,
feminised metal. Whether their songs are authentically written with feeling, or
simply coldly churned out to pay the bills, most of what I hear on the first
two albums (there was another in 2011 but I haven’t surrendered the effort to
check it out) at least sounds honestly
composed, almost as if they’re about
things. And I have a real affinity (for the most part) for mainstream, easily-digestible metal, which aims for all the heave and the atmosphere of my
beloved ‘real’ metal but with severe cutbacks on the doom and the aggression,
making way for things like catchy pop melodies and song structures which are
shamelessly easy to find an innocent satisfaction in. I guess that if there’s
any overall message to this blog post, aside from being a neurotic defence of
my love for a band many consider to be little more than an irrelevant joke, it’s
that things like commercial pop music and overly sentimental gothic metal aren’t
necessarily devoid of their own merit, just because people who listen to Four
Tet will probably try to make you feel bad for liking it. There’s a goodness to
be found in all types of music, except like Nazi punk or something, and you
shouldn’t let something’s inherent lameness get in the way of your enjoyment of
it. Your life will be all the more awesome for doing so.
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