Songfacts®:

• Being broken is one of several themes that run through Evanescence's self-titled third album, but this song is not about romantic heartbreak. Frontwoman Amy Lee explained to Kerrang! magazine: "A good friend of mine heads up an organization in New York that rescues victims of sex trafficking. My husband and I got involved and were really moved and horrified. As I was writing the song I was putting myself in that place - what would it be like to be trapped? Threatened? Alone? Unable to tell anyone what was happening because you're afraid of what would happen?"
• During her long break between Evanescence's second and third albums, Amy Lee learnt to play the concert harp. This intense and rocking ballad is one of a handful of tracks that she wrote for Evanescence on the plucked stringed instrument.
• Lee told MTV News how the song's subject matter of being trapped in a nightmare was inspired by her friend's experiences of rescuing victims of sex trafficking. "We were having conversations with her, and I was writing at the same time," she explained. "And a lot of times when I write, I just sort of make up words, and something will stick, and I'll be like, 'Oh, that's from my subconscious. That's what I need to write the song about.' And that sort of happened halfway through. I was like, 'I think I'm writing about this thing, it's on my heart,' just imagining being in such a trapped place and how that might feel, so the song was actually inspired by that idea."
• During an interview with MTV News, Lee stated that she drew inspiration from the 1998 British dark fantasy horror film Paperhouse for the clip. "[It's about] this girl, and everything that she would draw would come to life in her dreams, and she was creating this dream world for herself," she explained. "And at first, it was cool, but then it's like this nightmare. So I sort of thought it would apply, and be cool, to have it be this dream that you're trapped in. So you're in a place that, at first, is a magical world, but at the same time, you're isolated and trapped there, and that's the reason you want to come back to reality after a time."
• To create the video, the band used fiber optics, which according to Lee helped her draw the world around her from nothingness. When she drew things with her hands, they came to life. "It's a lot of fun with creating this surreal dream world," she told MTV News, "and the guys' performance is sort of like the dream within the dream, in an abyss of darkness; it's very cool."