Season 7 Idol, Carly Smithson, has some big news. Maybe she’s getting closer to finding her musical identity.
From Idol Chatter:
Carly Smithson is joining the original guys of Evanescence, who are re-launching as a hard-rock band called The Fallen. They’ll make a formal announcement Monday in Hollywood, with a press conference and first live performance. The band’s debut song, Bury Me Alive, will be available at that time for free download at wearethefallen.com.The lineup consists of Smithson and three of the four original members of Evanescence — guitarists Ben Moody and John LeCompt and drummer Rocky Gray — as well as bassist Marty O’Brien, whose recording and touring credits include Disturbed and Kelly Clarkson.
“This band is going to be theatrical and in-your-face and huge, ” Smithson says. “Everything that we do is just going to be big.”
Smithson had been working on a solo project of her own until connecting with Moody a few months ago. Now, she says, “I couldn’t be happier. Creatively we’re all on the same page. Visually, we’re all on the same page. We want a massive stage production. We watch the same TV shows, everything. It’s almost weird, that we’re like an awesome family all of a sudden.”
Carly had been working on a solo project before she hooked up with Moody a couple of months ago. Now she says, “I couldn’t be happier. Creatively we’re all on the same page. Visually, we’re all on the same page. We want a massive stage production. We watch the same TV shows, everything. It’s almost weird, that we’re like an awesome family all of a sudden.”
There won’t be an album from The Fallen right away. Instead, there’ll be a series of smaller, more frequent releases. Moody says, “Our goal is to release songs in small doses every couple months for a year and a half, We could take the time and lock ourselves away for six months, but we don’t want to do that. We want to get our there now. We want to play old stuff, and we want to play new stuff.”
Says Carly, “This band, I’ve always loved their melodies. Everyone else was trying to push me in that pop direction, but I was trying to get that rock sound.
Carly says if you know her from American Idol, you really don’t know her, “I was steered away from being myself on the show, ” she says. “It definitely feels like I’ve come into this situation, and I can get influenced by the boys. It’s like I can be myself again. It’s really cool.”
On the show, Carly really had a hard time forging a musical identity, but I’m not sure I’d blame that on the producers. One week she was Celine Dion, the next Ann Wilson–there was way too much “Love me Simon!” going on there. Maybe working with a band will help her figure out who she is as an artist.
