page_title: Speak to Me (Amy Lee song)
section_title: Recording and composition
hierarchical_section_title: Speak to Me (Amy Lee song) / Recording and composition
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the main house at Skywalker Ranch where George Lucas works.
context_page_description: "Speak to Me" is a song by American singer Amy Lee recorded for the ending credits of the independent movie Voice from the Stone. It was published online and made available for digital download on March 17, 2017. For the song, Lee collaborated with the movie's score producer Michael Wandmacher and director Eric Dennis Howell with whom she got acquainted to Voice from the Stone and its plot. Inspired by the movie's story line which she could relate to her personal life as a recent mother, Lee decided to contribute to the soundtrack with an original song. Musically, "Speak to Me" is a piano ballad instrumentally complete with strings, booming drums and cellos and features lyrics in which the protagonist pleads for love.
  Upon its release, the song received critical acclaim from music critics most of whom praised its haunting and cinematic sound accompanied by the singer's trademark vocals. A music video for the song for which Lee collaborated with Howell was filmed at the same location as the movie, in Siena.
context_section_description: Lee was initially contacted by the movie's director to write music for it. Closely related with both the director of the movie, Eric Howell, and the composer of its musical score, Michael Wandmacher, Lee had a conversation with both and "felt a surge of inspiration and immediately began writing" shortly afterwards. Lee elaborated how it was "a rare phenomenon to really share a creative vision so completely, and that made for a very powerful experience, and an end result that I am very proud of". She watched an unedited and incomplete version of Voice from the Stone in order to see if she would want to contribute to the movie's score; Lee was impressed by it.
  Since Voice from the Stone follows the story of a nurse trying to help a mute young boy who has recently lost his mother speak again, Lee felt that the plot "resonated very deeply" with her due to the fact that she had recently become a mother. The song she was asked to write was meant to illustrate the child's deceased mother's perspective and the feelings of unlimited love that extend even beyond death. In the movie, the mother's character is a classical singer and a piano player who also enjoyed the perks of motherhood; Lee expressed her compatibility with the given description, saying, "There is no way that this could have been more me! It's meant to be me, it has to be me, and I'm writing this song!". The singer further added that "it wasn't a stretch, in any way, for me to put myself exactly in the spot where I needed to be to write this song".
  Lee talked to the director and the score composer on the phone to discuss their opinions of what they think the ending song should sound like and Lee went to the piano right afterwards, conceiving the initial idea in an hour. She sent it to them afterwards and they both agreed that it is the direction they want to get on. Lee was invited to Skywalker Ranch which also served as the place where the movie's audio mixing was being handled. Lee went to record there for three days which marked the first time she had separated from her recent child. She revealed that the situation "put me in exactly the right place, emotionally, to sing and write from that emotional place that I needed to be in". The recording studio and the scenery at the ranch were the ideal environment for the singer to finish the writing process. Whenever she would get a writer's block composing at the piano, Lee would bike into the forest, during which she would "feel the beauty of earth and loneliness, at the same time". "Speak to Me" was completely recorded in two weeks.
  "Speak to Me" is a piano-led ballad which features Lee's vocals which were described as "haunting". Besides piano, its instrumentation is also provided by subtle strings as well as low-sounding drums and cellos which according to Billboard's Gil Kaufman "amp up the track's tension". According to Kaufman, the "chilling" song marked a return "into the spooky zone" for Lee. He further found her "signature emotion-choked vocals" present over the track's "haunting" piano line. Similar sentiments were offered by Riddhi Chakraborty from Rolling Stone India who felt that "Spoke to Me" marked a return to Lee's "signature style of powerhouse vocals combined with delicate piano", which he found to be similar to some of Evanescence's song, particularly "My Immortal" (2003) and "Lithium" (2006). Lyrically, the song finds the protagonist calling a "departed, ghostly" love as exemplified in the lyrics, "We are one breath apart, my love / And I'll be holding in it till we're together / Hear me call your name / Just speak, speak to me".
caption: A picture of the Skywalker Ranch where "Speak to Me" was written and composed
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