Amy Lee tells MTV News that the band’s new album, due October 4, is full of songs that are ‘painful’ and ‘desperate.’ By James Montgomery Evanescence’s Amy Lee Photo: Getty Images It’s been nearly four years since Evanescence wrapped the tour in support of their last album, The Open Door. In that time, singer Amy Lee has been hard at work doing anything but fronting a globally successful rock act. Sure, she wrote some songs along the way, but mostly, her focus was on being, as she puts it, “a normal person.” And, yes, she enjoyed every minute of it. “I would buy groceries, I thought about teaching kids music … I just needed to get away from it. My entire adult life, until a couple years ago, was all about this,” she told MTV News. “When I just turned 18, I got signed. I quit college, and we just moved into a house together and just started cramming to do whatever we needed to do to make it. And then we went to L.A., and the label had us up there doing artist development for a couple years, and then we were on tour and it went big fast, and then right after touring behind Fallen, we started writing again right away. … I just wanted to be a normal person for a minute, before I was 50 years old. “I got married and we were in the middle of a tour — I had, like, one week off, and then we went straight back on tour — and there was plenty of stuff that went on in that time; there was drama … there’s always freaking drama,” she continued. “So we get towards the end of it, and I was like, ‘Guys, I don’t know about this. I need a break.’ I just wanted to be normal; I didn’t want to think about the next thing for as long as it took.” And considering how hard she worked at avoiding Evanescence, it’s ironic that all it took was a single show with the band — a 2009 warm-up gig for a headlining spot at the Maquin
