Music Banter - View Single Post - Six Musicians With Pasts They Hope You'll Forget

Predator · 01-29-2008, 10:57 PM

Still from Cracked, same link

Quote:

#4.
Evanescence

Christian rock ranks right up there with Buddhist action movies in bad religion/entertainment combinations. It's therefore no surprise that, since becoming popular, Evanescence have tried to distance themselves as much as possible from their murky religious origins. Although the band strenuously deny that they have ever considered themselves a Christian rock group. It's no secret that its Christian members were once happy to use Christian radio stations and Christian retail outlets to shamelessly whore out their Christian influenced music. Just don't call them Christian rock, OK?

Became famous because...
Depressed teenagers the world over have managed to find inspiration in the faux-gothic, metal-lite of Evanescence. Admittedly, it inspires most to mope around and be even more miserable than usual, but at least it's making a difference. Lead singer Amy Lee, seems to account for a large part of their popularity, although in the eyes of most horny 15-year-old males, her vocals take a back seat to the fact that she was recently voted one of the hottest women in rock (clearly, some kids have a thing for Lily Munster).

Since rising to prominence in 2003, the band has sold a crapload of albums and picked up several prestigious awards (as well as a couple of Grammys), proving that you don't really need to be happy to be successful.

Became famous despite...

If there was an award for the rock star most likely to have his head flushed in the toilet by other, much cooler rock stars, then it would almost certainly go to former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody, who said, "The message we as a band want to convey more than anything is simple--God is Love".

While the sentiment behind this statement is commendable, it doesn't exactly conjure up your typical rebellious rock star image of someone who bites the heads off bats or urinates on the audience. However, when you hail from Little Rock, Arkansas and are faced with the challenging task of trying to peddle gothic-influenced pop music to a population more interested in dueling banjos, some kind of marketing strategy is probably necessary.

Evanescence seized the large Christian market to flog copies of their demo CD, Origin. While not exactly in the Stryper league of hurling bibles into the crowd, they were more than happy to run with the Christian angle, as long as it garnered them an instant fan following. Of course, as soon as it became clear they could sell records the normal way, they dropped the Christian thing quicker than a flaming bag of dog poo.