The Story Behind "Broken" by Seether

 

Screenshot from Official Video of Broken

"Broken" is a song from the Seether's first major album "Disclaimer," released in 2002. Later in 2004, the song was also featured on their second recompilation album "Disclaimer II" along with a version with Amy Lee.

Lead singer Shaun Morgan wrote this song, which deals with the pain of being parted from someone:

I wrote it two and a half years ago for my daughter, she was just born and I had to come to the States and I wrote the lyrics for her, it's about leaving somebody behind, you know that is really painful to do, and ultimately you're looking to the future saying "we'll see each other again and everything will be fine."

The hit version, which was released as the soundtrack to the movie The Punisher in 2004, featured Amy Lee (Shaun Morgan's girlfriend at the time), who had great success with her band Evanescence. In addition to adding vocals, Lee helped arrange the orchestra on the new version.

This version of the song was a big breakthrough for Seether, but in 2009 interview to Recoil, Morgan explained:

"We made the mistake of being a band that has a gold album that collaborates with a band that has a ten-times platinum album. That's a big mistake. We should have met up with somebody more on our level and seen what would happen. I don't know. Obviously, it's done huge things for us and it was amazing for us. I think if we collaborate again it will be with someone who is on par with us rather than someone who is a megastar and we get to hear all the crap about how we used them for fame and glory".

In 2013, Morgan explained how he felt about this version:

"It wasn't really my idea to do that. We had done it as a duet live a couple of times, and it was always something that I was willing to try. Originally we were open to try that and end up doing the acoustic version, but having it sort of be a milder, more mellow version of what eventually became the single. And our label, obviously, they smelled dollars. So they sent us into the studio and we did that version".

He added:

"There are times when I'm quite proud of that version, but other times when I feel like I should have just stuck with my guns and kept the original version of the way I prefer it. But in 2004 we didn't have any say at our record company, so it was mostly a lot of decisions were made for us and we just went with them. But I wrote the string parts at the end of it, and I think that's great. So it was a little different for us. I don't think I ever imagined it to be quite so soundtrack, epically sounding. I would have preferred for it to be what the vulnerability that we wrote it with was. But it's done now.