Amy Winehouse

I sat for twenty minutes looking at this blank screen, wondering what words I could use to sum up the absolute tragedy of Amy Winehouse’s untimely death.  I’m unsure at this point if those words will ever come satisfactorily.

There is a red carpet of cliché furnishing this sad story; Winehouse now joins Cobain, Joplin, Hendrix and Jones as the latest star to supernova at 27.  Many have commented that this was inevitable; perhaps this was because she was never afraid to show her vulnerability through her music. Somehow, I always hoped she would straighten out. But this is a day when a great talent has left the world stage.

It was no secret that the lady had troubles. Like Joplin, Winehouse was almost as well known for her self-destructive behaviour as she was for her incredible singing/ song writing talent. She fought a long and hard battle against substance abuse, and although police have said her death is not yet explained, most people presume to already know that if it was not the drinking, it was the drugs that killed her.

But lets focus on what she did achieve in the short space of time that she was here.

Winehouse was born September 14, 1983, in Southgate, North London and had incredible drive from a very young age; at 8 she trained at the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, and later attended the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School. She began writing music at the age of 14, but it wasn’t until a former boyfriend sent a tape of her singing to an A&R man that she took her first steps towards the limelight. It led to a contract with the Island/Universal record label and a publishing deal with EMI.

She co-wrote all but two of the songs in her debut album Frank (2003), winning an Ivor Novello songwriting award for Stronger Than Me, and was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize for best album in 2004. All this aged just 20 years old.

In 2006 Winehouse released her incredible album Back to Black, (inspired by her break up with boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil, who she later married in secret in 2007) reaching number seven in the British charts with the hook-infested autobiographical floor filler Rehab. The song, about her refusal to attend an alcohol rehabilitation centre generated huge publicity, paparazzi loving every opportunity they could to snap the feisty soul singer drinking on stage or in pubs. Winehouse was now established as the wild child of the British scene.

In February 2007 she was awarded best British female prize at the Brit Awards and, four months later, she picked up song of the year at the Mojo Awards. Winehouse was again nominated for the Mercury Prize and went on to be named artist of the year at the MTV Europe Music Awards in November. The fairytale was coming true, but the nightmare was also unraveling.

It seemed, as it did with Cobain, that Winehouse simply did not suit stardom. She was stunningly beautiful and stylish as well as talented and phenomenally unwell: a perfect combination for tabloid gutter press to feed on. As her popularity soared, so her health (mental and physical) began to deteriorate.

She made TV appearances on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and The Charlotte Church Show whilst drunk in 2007(or at least, under the influence of something stronger than Horlick’s), and punched a female fan at a gig in London. She confessed to self-harming (once carving her boyfriends name into her belly with a shard of glass in front of a US reporter), and battling with eating disorders.

In May 2007 she secretly married Fielder-Civil but it was far from the Disneyland myth of happy endings; they were both arrested in November of that year for GBH and attempting to pervert the course of justice (no charges were brought against Winehouse.) Later that year, when photographs were smeared over the tabloids of a woman they claimed to be Winehouse smoking crack cocaine, Winehouse finally said yes to rehab.

But it was becoming very clear for all to see that the grueling schedule of promotional appearances in the US and UK, and her dysfunctional life off stage was beginning to have a severe effect on the singer’s ability to perform.  In 2008 she played at a slew of festivals, with one critic calling her act at Glastonbury of that year “dismal”. 

In the two years that followed Winehouse made only a handful of low-profile gigs, but the turmoil of her private life seemed to continue as Winehouse was admitted to the Priory for treatment in Feb 2011. The final nail in her career came when she was jeered off stage in Serbia, too drunk to perform, and pulled out of her European Tour.

As with so many other young, talented artists that have died before their time, Winehouse could only give us a glimmer into what could have been. The sky was the limit. But like the other tortured souls, her demons got the better of her. Let’s not remember her as an addict, lets remember her as someone who sang with the soul of a fallen angel, made us dance to her rhymes of love and passion, and above all, entertained us like only a true star can.

R.I.P Amy, I hope you have found your peace.