On 4 September 2025, Amy Lee, Poppy, and Courtney LaPlante sent a shockwave through the Metal community with their earth-shattering collaborative single, ‘End of You’. With it, the three iconic female voices of heavy music drove the stake deep into the soil and their message was loud and clear: Girls have long had a presence in metal, and they are here to stay.

When a photograph of the ladies dropped on each of their social media pages on 27 August, heads turned as many speculated about the looming collaboration — and the short wait eventually paid off a week later.

This team-up not only pays tribute to the early 2000s sound that Evanescence were instrumental in shaping, but also seamlessly integrates the elements that brought Poppy and Spiritbox to acclaim today. The end product is a triumphant reclaiming of not only their voices in an androcentric industry, but that of other women like them as well.

Ominous synths herald the arrival of Lee’s signature mezzo-soprano vocals at the beginning of the track. An atmospheric organ-like riff accompany her ethereal voice as she delivers the opening lines: “I toil in silence, don’t know where my mind is / Numb from the shock of it all / Cut myself open, but I wasn’t broken / Tried to fix what wasn’t wrong”.

Leading up to the first chorus, Lee spells out her intentions with determination as she delivers, “If I must go, the waves should drag me out.”

This brings to mind all the battles she has fought as a woman in the context of the male-dominated music scene she performs in, especially when Evanescence first broke onto the scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Take for instance, the fact that the 2003 hit ‘Bring Me to Life’ could only receive airplay on the record label’s condition that Lee agreed to be accompanied by Nu-Metal vocalist Paul McCoy in the track.

”If there’s one thing that I have fought for in my own personal life and in my career, it’s the right to use my voice. Nobody is going to take that from me,” the Evanescence singer told the Los Angeles Times back in 2021.

Lee’s chorus — accompanied by muted drums that call back to those of Evanescence’s ‘Going Under’ — strikes a resounding chord with her struggles, as she sings about how she was “burned by the game for what [she] chose”. With finality, she wrests back control over her voice, declaring, “I’m pulling the plug on the dream / ‘Cause the end of you is the start of life for me.”

The way that Poppy appears after Lee in this song parallels how, in real life, she made her way into the music arena decades after Evanescence did. Despite the time that has passed, Poppy is no stranger to similar situations that Lee has faced her whole career.

Before breaking into heavier grounds, Poppy was known on YouTube for a series of eccentric videos where she portrayed a robotic android, critiquing internet culture and providing social commentary. During that time, she worked heavily with director Titanic Sinclair, and put out Pop music under the moniker That Poppy. After several years of walking that route, she slowly made the switch to heavier material following her signing with Sumerian Records in August 2019.

However, it later turned out that her partnership with Sinclair was not without its problems. In December that same year, Poppy put out a statement announcing that her and Sinclair have parted ways, alleging emotional abuse and manipulation on his part.

This contextualises Poppy’s verse in ‘End of Me’ as a genuine reflection of her journey to creative and personal freedom throughout her career. In an angelic voice that lies on the lower register of her vocal range, she confesses, “How was I to know? / Crystalline castles turned to dust in the palm of your hand”.

The following line, “But I’m wide awake this time / Burn it down to find nothing inside” signals her awakening from the nightmare she found herself in, before pulling herself up by the bootstraps and plunging back into the unknown as she takes charge of her life and career.

Then comes what has got to be the most satisfying part of the song, where at the tail end of the chorus, the soaring ‘00s Rock anthem devolves into a breakdown that is basically the sonic calling-card of modern Metalcore. To top off this unholy Metal sandwich, Poppy’s banshee screams transition, nay, transmute into Courtney LaPlante’s monstrous growls.

Arguably, in ‘End of You’, LaPlante plays a more symbolic role in comparison to the more literal experiences that Lee and Poppy’s verses might evoke.

Flitting from her gutturals to cleans, the Spiritbox frontwoman is the clarity that comes after the chaos, proclaiming, “You make me feel so wide awake for good this time / You are an echo of a dream as it fades from my mind / Wide awake for good this time / I can finally let go of the shame as I claim my new life.”

However, that is not to say that she has not struggled like the other two. LaPlante has also faced her fair share of challenges as a woman in Metal since getting her start in the now-defunct Metalcore outfit iwrestledabearonce.

In Spotify’s recent Women of Metal roundtable, where she spoke alongside Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale and Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia, LaPlante shared that she has been mistaken for a “merch girl” at venues she was supposed to be playing at, instead of being recognised as one of the performers.

On another occasion, she shared on the Zach Sang Show that she has had beers poured on her at venues just because she is a woman, and that, when she first started out, people were generally annoyed at her presence.

”People questioned you even having the ability — you kind of have to just do the classic like, you gotta work harder to get half the respect type thing,” LaPlante noted.

Having worked her way up to receiving a Grammy nomination, it is thus only fitting that the Spiritbox chanteuse gets to share her stories and voices on this historic track.

The outro comes as a spin on the main chorus, as the three stars reckon with what the song means to each of them. Realising that the system they were in was a “fractured lullaby” that drained their innocence, the time is nigh to “[pull] the plug” on the invisible barrier.

In summary, ‘End of You’ does not exist simply as a “just-because” collaboration between modern Metal’s most prominent female voices. The song also likely holds a special place in each of the artists’ hearts, based upon their lived experiences in the industry. Similarly, the song serves as a unifying beacon of hope for other girls who aspire to be like them, and who dream of one day breaking through the glass ceiling themselves.

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