Evanescence - Wasted on You - Single [Review]

Anyone who knows me knows that Evanescence is my favorite band/artist of all time; I have been a diehard fan for seventeen years now ever since they released their debut single "Bring Me to Life" in the spring of 2003. The band recently announced that their sixth studio album The Bitter Truth is being released some time this year and that the lead single "Wasted on You" would be released on Friday, April 24, 2020. That time has come, and I can't express my enthusiasm and excitement properly because I am absolutely in love with this song. Evanescence Ireland on Facebook described the song as Evanescence having thrown "swimming home [sic], halfway down the stairs [sic], weight of the world [sic] and some 90s grunge in a blender." For the most part, I think that that is accurate because even though I don't really find it comparable at all to "Weight of the World," it does have the lullaby qualities of "Swimming Home" and "Halfway Down the Stairs," and the guitars definitely remind me of '90s grunge. In fact, one of the first thoughts that I had when listening to the song was that it was a cross between a lullaby and Radiohead's "Creep." I have also seen some fans compare the song to Evanescence's 2000 album Origin (which wasn't officially released until 2016 when Evanescence released The Ultimate Collection - a box set of all of their albums up to that point on vinyl - a box set which I reviewed here), but I can't say that I hear that. A good deal of Origin is uncomfortably dark and gritty (one of the reasons why it's my favorite Evanescence album), but there isn't anything dark about this song - perhaps lyrically but not sonically. The song sounds a great deal like a keyboard-driven lullaby before it gets heavy, and it seems to lyrically be about being stuck in grief following a breakup: "I can't move on. Feels like we're frozen in time. I'm wasted on you." It does make me wonder who the song is about because if the song is personal to frontwoman Amy Lee at all, then who could she have written this about? To the best of my knowledge, she is still with her husband Josh Hartzler, although it is also worth noting that the song never once explicitly says that the subject was a lover. Friends can and often do break our hearts, as well.

As I write this review, it is April 24, 2020 - an extremely trying and difficult time for just about everyone in the world because of the COVID-19 crisis. A lot of creativity has been put on hold because of stay-at-home orders. We are expected to quarantine ourselves at home to the best of our ability to help stop the spread of the disease, which means that movies cannot be made; musicians cannot record music unless they have studios at home, nor can musicians shoot music videos because they are not allowed to be together. Evanescence found a creative way around shooting this music video, however; the music video depicts the band members hanging out at home - struggling between emotional highs and lows, something to which we can all (or at least most of us) relate right now. The music video comes at such a poignant time in our lives, proving once again that art saves. That is something that I have always loved about Amy Lee - her ability to turn hardship into something beautiful and creative. She has been quoted as saying that "you can't control all the crazy stuff that happens to you; all you can control is the way you handle it," and those are definitely words by which she seems to live. When Evanescence's equipment was set afire last year at a festival in Mexico, for example, it went on to inspire some of the imagery in the music video for "The Chain," Evanescence's Fleetwood Mac cover that they released last year to promote the video game Gears of War 5. The ability to transform something destructive into something creative is so inspirational and one of several reasons why I look up to Amy. The music video for "Wasted on You" is no exception. The band members having to stay at home didn't stop them from giving us an emotionally moving and powerful music video. Lee also lost her brother Robby to epilepsy two years ago, which cut his life short at only twenty-four or twenty-five years of age (depending on when his birthday was), so I also fully expect there to be at least one song on The Bitter Truth about him.

"Wasted on You" itself - although not originally written about this pandemic (as I said, it sounds like a breakup song, and the title reminds me a great deal of Amy's beautiful b-side from The Open Door titled "The Last Song I'm Wasting on You") - could also be repurposed as being about the COVID-19 pandemic. It could be expressing anger toward leaders because of how they have handled the pandemic. (I won't mention any names, although Evanescence did confirm that there will potentially be some political material on the album.) The second verse especially reminds me a great deal of what's going on right now: "Once, this was a garden. This was our world. All of the nightmares stayed in the dark. A little too much time by yourself, and you become the enemy. Just look at us now." If that doesn't accurately describe what's going on right now, then nothing ever will. Amy even said that this song was not originally going to be the album's lead single, but it seemed like the most appropriate choice because of the pandemic, and I couldn't agree more. You can tell that it wasn't originally meant to be the lead single because it sounds more like a closing track than it does a lead single; it doesn't have the energy that previous lead singles such as "Bring Me to Life," "Call Me When You're Sober," and "What You Want" had, but I am still so happy that this song was chosen because even though I can't speak for the rest of the album because I haven't heard anything else yet, this beautiful song and music video were much needed right now. The only thing that irks me about the media attention that this song has been getting is that some of it claims that it's the band's first new song in nine years, which is not true. While The Bitter Truth will be the band's first album of all new content since its self-titled 2011 album, "Wasted on You" is not its first new song since 2011. Such journalists obviously slept on "Imperfection" and "Hi-Lo" released from Synthesis (which I reviewed here) in 2017. I cannot wait to hear more of this album and am really looking forward to hearing what the central sound will be. Amy has said before that it has some The Open Door vibes, and that's definitely exciting to me because that is my favorite commercial album of theirs.