Last weekend, I was leaving the Tahoe area. I hadn’t really been following the news at all while on vacation. While in a convenience store, I happened to glance at Twitter and saw the news: Amy Winehouse, dead at age 27.
How you reacted probably depended on what your relationship was with Winehouse as a personality.
For some, she was a joke. For example, she gained a certain notoriety in 2006 for an awful, shambling (Drunk? Drugged?) duet with Charlotte Church of “Beat It.” Or perhaps she came to your attention when she was caught on camera smoking crack.
But even though I’d seen the “Beat It” video, I’d quickly forgotten it. The reason I blogged about her here in January of 2007 was that I heard a track off her Back in Black album, which had already been released in the U.K., and had caused a sensation, but had not yet come out in the U.S.
I fell in love with her instantly and I fell hard. Her voice was gorgeous. She had a way of caressing words that was amazing.
For example, on the song “Fuck Me Pumps,” from her 2003 debut album Frank, she sings a line:
- You don’t like players; that’s what you say
But you really wouldn’t mind a millionaire
Which isn’t a great lyric, but there’s this incredible way she makes an internal rhyme of “play” and “say” in the first line (plus the alliteration of “mind” and “million” in the second) and then manages to make “say” and “millionaire” rhyme, toying with the final syllables of each line. Her phrasing just blew me away.
So, I loved her singing and the songs she wrote. Back in Black instantly became one of my all-time favorite albums. I even tracked down Frank, which I’d read she was disappointed with. The production is definitely lackluster, although she’s still good on it and there are moments that sparkle.
The record label was clearly trying to position her as a jazz singer in the mold of Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald. But on Back in Black, her music contains elements of jazz, soul, hip-hop, and reggae. It comes off as authentically retro and utterly contemporary.
This 2004 profile (from after the release of her debut album, but before the drinking and drugs started getting bad in 2005) highlights her unusual qualities:
Felix Howard, co-author of a number of tracks on Frank and a former writer for the Sugababes and Tom Jones, heard one of those recordings. ‘It was unlike anything that had ever come through my radar. When she showed up for our first session she was wearing a pair of jeans that had completely fallen apart with “I Love Sinatra” embroidered on the arse. That’s so Amy. I just fell in love with her. Also, she has the power to scare the shit out of very seasoned, salty jazz people. I was doing her session with some very serious players. And when she started singing, they were like, “Jesus Christ!”‘
Yeah, she was never going to be a standard chanteuse.
For a jazz singer, she sure is punk rock. And that ‘fuck you’ element pervades everything she does… There are so many reasons why Amy Winehouse could – should – be a huge star. Talent. Charisma. Songs. Voice. Attitude. But there’s one big reason why she may not be. That box she implores you to take? She just won’t fit inside it. Sounds Afro-American: is British-Jewish. Looks sexy: won’t play up to it. Is young: sounds old. Sings sophisticated: talks rough. Musically mellow: lyrically nasty.
I listened to her music non-stop four years ago and then I put it away, as I would normally do. Periodically, I would hear some awful story about her canceling events or showing up wasted, but I tried to avoid that stuff because it made me sad. I kept hoping she would pull it together, that there would be another record. But she wasn’t a mess, she was an addict. She didn’t escape the consequences.
I’ll say more about that aspect next week, but for now let’s turn to her music. She only recorded two albums, but there’s also some great remixes, B-sides, non-album tracks, and live recordings.
Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry on Their Own (Al Usher Remix) — BUY
Amy Winehouse – What It Is (Original Demo) — BUY