She endured a very public split with her lead guitarist and a battle with radio stations nationwide that believe women can't rock. Now, after finishing a huge tour, Lee finds herself back where she started - writing the lyrics that catapulted an Arkansas rock band to the world stage.

Lee was 14 when she founded the rock band with Ben Moody after they met at summer camp. They wrote music together and played at small Little Rock venues before landing a deal with Wind-up Records, which released Fallen in the spring of 2003.

Moody abruptly left the band about seven months later, leaving Lee to work on Evanescence's sophomore effort. But this time it will have to be different.

Lee is the words of Evanescence, and Moody was the music. She says not having him around this time gives her liberty.

Everyone's involved

"Ben has a certain kind of pop structure that he follows that I wouldn't," the 22-year-old singer says. "He would always be corralling my ideas. It's going to be cool this time to have more freedom, just in that there's more people writing like a real band. Everybody's involved and we have a good successful album under our belt, so there's less pressure."

There's no word on when the next album will be released. Lee hopes to quell fans' demands for new material with a DVD release of tour footage, possibly around Thanksgiving.

The demands of nonstop touring kept Lee from writing, but for fans the treat of seeing an Evanescence show may stave off the desire for new material. To see the band on stage is to realize how unique it really is in today's pop-heavy music scene.

When Evanescence comes on, Lee is a woman obsessed. Her long black hair flies everywhere as she jumps and pumps her fist in the air to punch the meaning of her lyrics home. Her haunting wail and strong voice echo in the arena after she's finished singing.

"When you get up there ... you just draw a blank and zone out and become Evanescence," she says.

Lee's magic is an ability to draw her fans into the music. A piano rises from the stage and the crowd quiets as she sits and plays her solo - no singing. The audience slowly begins to go wild - a rarity today of teenagers and twentysomethings cheering for piano riffs instead of bare midriffs. And the thing is, she wrote it herself.

That, some argue, makes Lee a strong role model for women.

"I never saw myself as a role model. It's a word I hear a lot now," she says. "What am I going to say? I'm a good role model? I make tons of mistakes. It's funny. You always have a vision for your music and you think, 'Who's going to like it?' And 14-year-old girls are never what I had in mind. But I think that's awesome."

Being a woman heading up a rock band has given Evanescence a unique sound, but it didn't come easily. Rock radio wouldn't play the band at first.

"Program directors and DJs would hear the track and just turn it off," Lee says. "(They would say) 'What are you doing with a chick on a piano? Go take this somewhere else.' "

Radio finally relents

Eventually a few stations relented and fans reacted the music.

"I like to think that it's because I'm coming from a place where a lot of people are," she says.

"Everybody feels the same feelings all around the world. Everyone has the same biological makeup. I think it's cool for people to hear somebody talking about something they've been through and understand. I hope people like our music because it's real music, a real experience."