My Immortal
by Evanescence
- 68
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 19
- Danceability
- 87
- Acousticness
Wind-up's choice of recording for Fallen surprised Amy Lee. She disliked it. The label used the version from the band's 2000 demo CD, with her teenage demo vocal over a MIDI keyboard. She said it sounded like a little kid. It was recorded after hours at the radio station where her father worked, because the band could not afford a real session. When "My Immortal" became the album's third single on December 8, 2003, she and Ben Moody instead chose the re-recording the label had turned down. This "band version" has guitar, drums, bass and an arrangement by David Campbell.
Moody wrote the lyrics, from fiction, and Lee wrote the piano music when both were 15. Lee added the bridge. They first recorded the song in 1997, and it was meant for the 1998 Evanescence EP but cut before release.
The single reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 10, 2004, and topped the charts in Canada, Greece and Portugal. It helped Fallen move from No. 9 to No. 3 on the Billboard 200. David Mould directed the video in black and white in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. The song earned a Grammy nomination in 2005 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
My Immortal runs at 68 BPM, the tempo of slow ballads, ambient and downtempo. In classical terms it sits in largo territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.53 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 882 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.