Use My Voice

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General Information

Written by: A. Lee, J. Majura, T. McCord, T. McLawhorn, W. Hunt and D. Jakoub

Use My Voice is the eighth track and third single from Evanescence's fifth studio album, The Bitter Truth, that was released on August 14, 2020. The title was originally published on the music repertoire website, ASCAP, before the band confirmed its release. It's one of the four songs the band worked on with Nick Raskulinecz in early 2020. The song features backing vocals from Lzzy Hale, Deena Jakoub, Lindsey Stirling, Taylor Momsen, Sharon den Adel, Amy McLawhorn (Troy's wife), Jen Majura, and Amy's sisters, Lori and Carrie. They lent their voices to create the tidal wave of girl power on the track.

The band teamed up with HeadCount on the release of the song to promote voter registration for the 2020 US presidential election.

The song was originally intended to be the first single from The Bitter Truth, but Wasted on You was released instead due to the coronavirus pandemic because its lyrics somehow mirrored the world's situation.

Amy explained the song:

This is an era of awakening and full of powerful beauty. I hope to inspire others to seek truth, find their own voices and use them as I step up to use mine. Don’t let anybody speak for you. Only you can do that.

Amy told MTV News that the song was inspired by how she’s been “feeling about the state of our country”:

“As we were recording it, I was listening back to my own words and started asking myself, ‘What can I do to use my voice? How can we use our platform for good and empower people?’ I believe that this is a very important, revolutionary time,” she shares. “Things are messed up. I’ve never been political publicly — I’ve kept that part of myself private because I see music as a place to get away from our differences and find unity. We need to be unified now more than ever, but I finally feel in my heart that if I’m going to be true to my word. It’s time to use my voice to help promote our future.”

She told Rolling Stone:

That song has been bubbling in the background for me for a couple of years. As life went on and as the state of our country and world went on, over that course of time, just every once in a while I’d have another line and something else that I needed to say, and it just kept being a place where I would pour that into. And then finally, when we got it all wrapped up and we got to come together as a band, right before everything shut down [due to COVID-19], it just became this beautifully empowering and seemingly important moment for me personally and for all of us a band. I’ve never really at all, in any small form, really, spoken politically or made any real statement about what I believe and what’s going on there because I don’t like to divide the fans. I want the music to be our free place where we can all have something in common. But sometimes things are just right and wrong, and you have feelings that can’t be held back, and if I’m gonna be true to myself and my music like I always have been, then I have to say what’s heavy on my heart. We need to empower people to use their voices literally and vote. That’s the amazing privilege that we have living here, the fact that our voices matter, and that can guide and should guide and will guide what comes next. And this year more than ever, I think we’re all just asking, over and over, the question just, “What is next?” And we can be a part of that, and we need to be a part of that. So I feel very grateful. The people at HeadCount are awesome. They are totally non-partisan and all about empowering the voice of the people.

She discussed the recording process of the guest female voices on the song:

“We all live all over the place, so mostly the girls just recorded themselves, sent the audio to me and we piled it all up together. Just to feel their support in a song that is different thematically for me and for us as a band. It’s stepping out and up in a new way – just feeling that support in that music feels so great. I’m so grateful to them.”

Amy was inspired by a statement written by Chanel Miller, the survivor of a 2015 sexual assault in Stanford University, to write Use My Voice:

“Some of the things they said in the case against her to let him off lit a huge fire in me. But what lit the biggest fire wasn’t the negative, it was the positive. After he was let off with a very light sentence, she stood up and read her truth, her story, to her attacker. It was the most inspiring, powerful thing. It sparked something in me. I was so hit by the fact that the clear, simple, uncomplicated truth of her experience was stronger than any weapon they could have used against her. She used her voice. After all that time, struggle, money and fighting, the most powerful thing were the words she said. I literally took that statement, read it like three times, and then put pen to paper.” “This is, in my heart, a battle of truth and love vs. lies and hate,” says Amy of how the song evolved to take on a broader personal meaning for her. “In my life, band, career and personal life, I’ve had to fight for my voice to be heard and not be ignored, or taken out of my mouth and put out of context. It’s very close to my heart that our voices matter and need to be heard.

Amy began working on the song a couple years ago, but was holding onto it because she had not built a chorus part for it. When all the events of 2020 popped off, she knew she needed to finish the song more than ever, and Deena Jakoub helped her realize the missing piece of the song.

Fans who pre-saved the song on Apple, Spotify and Deezer were entered for a chance to attend a Zoom call with Evanescence and hear the song a day before its release.

It was rumored that the song would be used for Eric D. Howell's graphic novel project, The Revolution of Cassandra, but was actually inspired by it. Amy Lee worked with Eric before on his movie Voice from the Stone, where she wrote a song for the closing credits called Speak to Me. Veridia frontwoman, Deena Jakoub, also has songwriting credits on this track. The second issue of Echoes from the Void is named after Howell's graphic novel and connects both its story and Use My Voice.

In a show at Assago, Italy of the Worlds Collide tour on November 10, 2022, Deena Jakoub and Sharon den Adel duetted with Amy Lee during the bridge.

Versions

Studio Version

Use My Voice

• Recording date: January - February 2020
• Status: Released, Available
• Released On: August 14, 2020 as the third single from The Bitter Truth

The Bitter Truth (Track #8)

• Length: 4:02

Use My Voice [Radio Edit]

• Recording date: January - February 2020
• Status: Unreleased, Unavailable
• Length: 3:15

Use My Voice [Instrumental]

• Recording date: January - February 2020
• Status: Released, Available
• Released On: The Bitter Truth Evolution cassette (B3)
• Length: 4:08

UMV [The Bitter Truth Evolution demo]

• Recording date: 2015 - 2020
• Status: Released
• Released On: The Bitter Truth Evolution cassette (A3)
• Length: 0:33

Will Cant Catch [The Bitter Truth Evolution]

• Recording date: 2020
• Status: Released
• Released On: The Bitter Truth Evolution cassette (A4)
• Length: 0:37

Live Versions

Use My Voice (A Live Session From Rock Falcon Studio)

• Performing dates: Aired October 30, 2020 and December 5, 2020
• Status: Limited release
• Released On: Bonus CD A Live Session From Rock Falcon Studio from The Bitter Truth (Track #6)
• Length: 4:01

Use My Voice (Piano and Vocal)

• Performing dates: January 22, 2021
• Status: Released on YouTube
• Example: 2021 She Rocks Awards

Use My Voice [Driven to Perform Livestream Concert by Cooper Tire]

• Performing period: May 13, 2021
• Example: Driven to Perform Livestream Concert by Cooper Tire, Nashville, TN, USA

Use My Voice [Live]

• Performing period: November 5 - December 11, 2021; January 14 - November 2022; February 25 - October 28, 2023; May 9 - June 15, 2024
• Example: Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Portland, OR, USA (November 5, 2021)

Lyrics

Cover my ears and close my eyes
Just long enough to stop the noise
Go on take everything and throw it away
But I will use my voice

Drown every truth in an ocean of lies
Label me a bitch because I dare to draw my own line
Burn every bridge and build a wall in my way
But I will use my voice

Whether you like it or not, you're gonna take what I got
If we can't talk about it, we'll just keep drowning in it
Give me credit or not
I give a lot, give a lot
But don't you speak for me

No, don't you speak for me

Never mind me, I'm a waste of your time
I'm never gonna fit in the box that you need
And I can read between the lines, yeah
Gather your friends and wave your gun in my face
But I will use my voice

Whether you like it or not, you're gonna take what I got
If we can't talk about it, we'll just keep drowning in it
Give me credit or not
I give a lot, give a lot
But don't you speak for me

But don't you speak for me

Whether you like it or not
Whether you like it or not
Whether you like it or not
Whether you like it or not

One day soon, it's gonna fall back on you
No more lies, we're gonna break right through
Like it or not

If we can't talk about it, we'll just keep drowning in it
Give me credit or not
I give a lot, give a lot
But don't you speak for me

No, don't you speak for me

Don't you speak for me!

Video

Still from the Use My Voice video

A music video was filmed for the song on the weekend of the 25th and 26th of July, as Eric D. Howell posted that he was in Nashville filming and used the song title as a hashtag. The music video was previewed during Amy's CBS This Morning interview on August 26, 2020. The next day, it was announced the video will premiere on August 28, 2020 at 9am PT/12pm ET, with Amy taking part of a live Q&A. The video follows Amy Lee, her bandmates and a variety of other activists armed with flags, flares and signs in protest.

This video was shot in 3 separate shoots. One in Nashville with the guys and me, one in Germany with Jen, and one in Minneapolis where Eric (our director) is from. — Amy on the live Q&A

Eric posted the following on his Instagram:

This project started over a year ago when Amy shared it with me. Since then we have been trying to come up with the best way to express her words with visuals. By surrounding myself with phenomenal collaborators like @jillian.nodland @bohakala @west0fthesun we managed to make something very special. Thank you you our crews in #Nashville #Germany and #Minneapolis

Amy had discussed with Eric about him directing the video when the band starting laying down the track in early 2020, because the song was originally intended to be the first single. She said the video originally had a different concept: "like pushing, going upstream in a crammed in-crowd, like all pushing one direction and I'm squeezing through going in the other direction - totally impossible things to do now that we have to social distance." She discussed the scene where she's looking out the window while fireworks set off over the White House:

"So that moment where you see the White House - for me, it's standing up and looking out at a world that feels broken and feels like something's coming, like a revolution, like the people's voices just stepping out and looking out at the world and going, 'OK, it's time for me to open my eyes and do whatever I can.' I'm trying to remember what day the video came out, but then the very next day, there was literally fireworks on the White House lawn, and I was looking at it going like, 'There is no way that I could have planned that! That would actually happen!'"

The video has been nominated for Best Rock Video at the 2021 MTV VMA's and the winner was revealed on September 12, 2021. However, Use My Voice didn't win, and Amy tweeted a thank you message to the fans.

Directed By Eric D. Howell
Produced By Jillian Nodland
Director of Photography: Bo Hakala
Production Design: David Weiberg
Editor: Nate Maydole
Production Company: Picture Factory, Inc.

• Watch the music video here.

A behind the scenes video was uploaded to the band's YouTube account on September 9, 2020. Watch it here.

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  Tim McCord, Amy Lee, Will Hunt and Troy McLawhorn with director Eric D. Howell during the shooting of the music video.

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Commercial Release

Main article: Use My Voice Single

The digital single was released on August 14, 2020.

Tracks released with the single include:

• "Use My Voice"