Recording and Composition
"Bring Me to Life" was written by Amy Lee, Ben Moody and David Hodges for their first studio album Fallen. Recording work for Fallen started at Ocean Studios in Burbank, California, where most of "Bring Me to Life" was recorded, prior to full album production. The song was mixed by Jay Baumgardner in his studio, NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood, on an SSL 9000 J. A 22-piece string section was recorded in Seattle by Mark Curry. "Bring Me to Life" was mixed at the Newman Scoring Stage and Bolero Studios, both in Los Angeles. The orchestra parts were arranged by David Hodges and David Campbell. During an interview, Lee recalled that during the recording process of the song it was said to her that the song must have male vocals: "It was presented to me as, 'You're a girl singing in a rock band, there's nothing else like that out there, nobody's going to listen to you. You need a guy to come in and sing back-up for it to be successful.'"
According to the sheet music published by Alfred Music Publishing on the website Musicnotes.com, "Bring Me to Life" is a rock, alternative metal, hard rock, chamber pop and gothic metal song set in a common time and performed in a moderate tempo of 95 beats per minute. It is written in the key of E minor and Lee's vocal range for the song runs from the note A3 to D5. In the song, Paul McCoy sings the lines "Wake me up/ I can't wake up/ Save me!" in a rap style. St. Petersburg Times' Brian Orloff called the song a "...boffo hit" in which Lee sang the lines "'Call my name and save me from the dark' over surging guitars." Ann Powers from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote: "'Bring Me to Life,' with its lyrical drama and crunchy guitars, branded the band as overdone nu-metal." Kristi Turnquist of The Oregonian called the song a power ballad. Joe D'Angelo from MTV wrote that the "...toothy riffs" of songs like "Going Under" and "Bring Me to Life" might suggest that "...Nobody's Home" (2005) from Avril Lavigne's second studio album Under My Skin will sound like "an Evanescence song with Avril, not Amy Lee, on vocals."
Rolling Stone's Kirk Miller wrote that: "...thanks to the song's digital beats, clean metal-guitar riffs, scattered piano lines and all-too-familiar mix of rapping and singing", "it was similar to Linkin Park's material. Nick Catucci of The Village Voice found "...piano tinkles, Lee's breathless keen, dramatic pauses, guitars like clouds of locusts, 12 Stones singer Paul McCoy's passing-12-kidney-stones guest vocals." Vik Bansal of musicOMH compared Evanescence's own song "Going Under" with "Bring Me to Life", noting their similarity to Linkin Park's material. Lee said, during an interview with MTV News: "Basically, we go through life every day, kind of doing the same thing, going through the motions, and nothing phases us for the most part. Then one day something happens that wakes up and makes realize that there's more to life than just feeling nothing, feeling numb. It's as if never felt before and just realized there's this whole world of emotion or meaning that never seen before. It's just like, 'Wow, I've been asleep all this time.'"
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