Music Review: Evanescence "Lithium"

Evanescence

Lithium

Album: The Open Door

Year: 2007

       Amy Lee is conflicted about taking her medication for depression in the eloquent “Lithium.”

         A timid piano opens the single, setting a shaken tone.  The chorus begins the single. She stares at her lithium pill on the counter and dreads taking it. Once she swallows it, she will be calm and easygoing. She’ll get through workday wanting to get things done and chatting in the lunch room. It’s as though she has a split personality. When she’s off it, she stays in bed for weeks, unable to pick up the phone. Her sadness is a part of her identity and it’s the emotion she’s used to feeling most. However, it gets to be too much and she no longer wants to suffer. (“Lithium, don't want to lock me up inside/Lithium, don't want to forget how it feels without/Lithium, I want to stay in love with my sorrow/Oh, but God, I want to let it go.”

               After taking her pill, she taps her boyfriend on the shoulder. He’s in the family room on the couch with the television on. His eyes are glazed over and a nearly empty bottle of vodka is clutched in his hand. She tells him she needs the comfort of his chest rising and falling tonight. He grunts and gets up to go the refrigerator for another bottle of vodka. She walks back to their bedroom by herself, wiping away tears. He’d rather drink than support her. (“Come to bed, don't make me sleep alone/Couldn't hide the emptiness, you let it show/Never wanted it to be so cold/Just didn't drink enough to say you love me.”)

              In the pre-chorus, she pulls the covers to her chest and traces the edge of the pillow. Despite taking her medication as prescribed, she can’t remember what she did the laundry. Her outline becomes broken on the pillow and she sits up straight up in bed, watching her hands tremble. The tremors haven’t happened in a long time. Her doctor would know what to do but she doesn’t want to know the answer. (“I can't hold on to me/Wonder what's wrong with me.”)

            The chorus is sung again.

           In the  bridge, she remembers the crippling depression she was in before she was diagnosed. She skipped all her classes, slept around with any guy who looked at her and kept herself drunk and/or high, whichever helped numb her. She doesn’t ever want to return to being that person, a self she doesn’t even recongnize. If her only medication would kick in. (“ Don't want to let it lay me down this time/Drown my will to fly/Here in the darkness I know myself/Can't break free until I let it go/Let me go.”)

             He is not the blame for her depression. Like him, she is miserable and finding ways to distract herself. It was inevitable she would be with someone as damaged as herself. Even she was young, she sought out the kids in her grade with the stony demeanors and dead eyes. (“Darling, I forgive you... After all/Anything is better than to be alone/And in the end I guess I had to fall/Always find my place among the ashes.”)

        The pre-chorus is sung again.

        In the final chorus, she resolves to call her doctor in the morning to get her dosage adjusted. (“Lithium, don't want to lock me up inside..Lithium, ...stay in love with you/I'm gonna let it go.”)

          Lee’s grave, withdrawn vocals are starless, wandering to every space she can to find a spot of light. She has to believe there is a relief from the constant melancholy. The melancholy is all she knows. It’s a safe emotion for her. If the medication works, her other option is to be stable, something she doesn’t know how which scares her.

           The gray “Lithium” shares it story with an unabashed point of view, hoping to raise awareness and destigmatize mental illness.