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How Billie Eilish inspired Evanescence's Amy Lee: "She’s just being completely herself"

Amy Lee says she found inspiration from Billie Eilish while writing for Evanescence's new album The Bitter Truth.

How Billie Eilish inspired Evanescence's Amy Lee: "She’s just being completely herself"
Words:
Emily Carter
Amy Lee photo:
Eric Ryan Anderson

Having previously credited her 2020 collaboration with Bring Me The Horizon as a "boost" when it came to writing Evanescence's new album The Bitter Truth, Amy Lee also says that Billie Eilish was a big inspiration for her.

Discussing the writing process for the band's new record, the vocalist explains to Consequence Of Sound, "I listen to all kinds of music. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t listen to rock, mostly. It’s not that I don’t like it. Of course I do. I really love the new Bring Me the Horizon album a lot. That’s my favourite new rock album in a good while. But, my tastes are all over the place.

"I really do love good pop – like good, dark pop," Amy continues. "So, with Billie Eilish, even more than her style, which is very dark, what I really love about her is just her authenticity. She’s just being completely herself. I see a lot of things in her that remind me of myself, especially when I was younger.

Read this: "I needed to face the abyss head on": Evanescence’s Bitter Truth laid bare

"I get inspired by all kinds of things, even if it’s just in the way that somebody arranged the songs. Like, 'Oh, they didn’t end on the chorus. Why don’t we do something like that?'"

Last year, Amy discussed how – as well as generally being a fan of the band – working with Horizon helped her get through writer's block.

"…While I’d been very busy working on our album, and getting a little bit stuck on some of the words, they sent me this track to work on [One Day The Only Butterflies Left Will Be In Your Chest As You March Towards Your Death], and it was such a beautiful escape and release for me," she told Revolver. "It felt like something I wasn’t supposed to do, like my secret little side thing, and it really was just so fulfilling to go back and forth, to collaborate, to have all these conversations everyday with Oli [Sykes, frontman]. It felt beautiful to finish something. It was the boost and the inspiration to take the Evanescence music with a new satisfaction and fuel, where I’d just been frustrated before."

Evanescence’s The Bitter Truth is released on March 26 via Sony Music.

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