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Amy Winehouse 1983 - 2011

http://m.holymoly.com/music/blog/amy-winehouse-1983-201158264

Amy Winehouse 1983 - 2011

There’s an awful lot of talk about “real music” these days. A bogus and myopic attempt to distance the transparently marketed commercial pop acts from those we hope will be this generation’s artists of legacy; those we can point to in our old age and say, “You hear that son, that’s the music of my day. Proper pop stars, with songs sung from the heart with voices that could make the hardest of bastards cry like babies.” It’s mostly nostalgia and nonsense. But whatever real means, Amy Winehouse was it. The most talented, charismatic and brilliant singer, songwriter and performer I’ve ever witnessed. And I’m devastated that she’s gone.
The first time I ever heard of Amy Winehouse was when, in the summer of 2003, I was given her album Frank to review for a music magazine called Bang. I read the press release and was filled with a familiar dread. I think it mentioned nu-soul and jazz in the same sentence, so I knew I’d hate it. Only, as it played, my expected reaction failed to materialise. These songs sounded way beyond the abilities of the 19-year-old former Sylvia Young girl who wrote and sang them. I stayed up all night, playing Frank over and over, trying to find something wrong with it. I forget what I wrote, but there were lots of long, gushing, flabbergasted words. It’s still the most impressive debut album I’ve ever heard.

Frank’s sales were modest. The up side of that was it was possible to see Amy play gigs practically every week in the smallest of places - often just her, perched on a record shop counter with a guitar. At her first big showcase at London’s Bush Hall, she stood next to me during the support slot (by her pal Tyler James). I got the kind of knotted stomach and tingly skin you get when you’re near a superstar, which was ridiculous. She wasn’t remotely famous; she just seemed to radiate. A friend of mine confirmed he’d seen her in his local Tesco and similarly froze on the spot. What ever “it” is, Amy Winehouse had it in excess.

I don’t think any of us were prepared for Back To Black. It’d been a long three years between records, and by then she’d become a celebrity - making her startling weight loss the subject of speculation in the glossies. When Rehab arrived in the Holy Moly office it went straight onto repeat. An audaciously knowing, raucously defiant and completely brilliant pop record that was as much the work of producer Mark Ronson as it was Ms Winehouse. I remember someone remarked, “This is going to be how everybody else’s records will sound for the next five years”.

Back To Black is as flawless, immaculately realised, perfectly pitched, masterfully written and performed as it’s probably possible for an album to be in the 21st century. As songs, the title track and Love Is A Losing Game aren’t merely good facsimiles of classic songs - they are classic songs. Back To Black wears its 60s soul on its sleeve but remains a modern record; it could come from no other time. And while the LP collection of its author is predominantly from a bygone America, these songs are rooted in late Saturday nights and all too early Sunday mornings in London, 2006. This was modern romance, complicated by booze and smoke. Amy sang her life to us and connected.

And that voice. What a voice. Even after eight years we don’t have the words to describe it. We’re startled, beguiled and awed every time we hear it. We always forget just how good she is. How good she was.

The Winehouse live experience became bigger and better - a proper soul show with pizaz. But never at the expense of Amy’s relationship with the audience. Between songs she was candid to an uncomfortable degree, explaining the events behind the words and updating us on her feelings for the men unflatteringly painted in them. There was no one like her, though many tried. And while the tabloids delighted in news of cancelled gigs, late arrivals and booing crowds, we can honestly say we never saw Amy Winehouse give anything less than a stunning performance on stage. If anything, her vocals were better now dope was no longer her drug of choice. Despite her much publicised appetite for harder drugs, they never affected her when it mattered - when she sang. The final gig of what would be her final UK tour, despite leaving the Brighton crowd jeering impatiently, was as good as any we ever saw her play. Even though we knew she was in a very bad way.

We can’t honestly say we didn’t expect the day to come when we heard Amy had died. But we always clinged to the hope she’d change, and that drugs would just be one chapter in the story. The times we interviewed her, we always left feeling like we’d been with someone capable of achieving anything she wanted to. Someone for whom writing and performing were so natural we’d be watching her till the day we died. There was such fire in her. But fires have a tendency to burn out of control.

It is utterly selfish to be feeling so sad about one woman we couldn’t even call a friend. But all I keep thinking is how I wish the news wasn’t true this time. Amy Winehouse was a Billie Holiday when she should’ve been an Ella Fitzgerald. We’re going to miss her so much.

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