FEATURE:
Amy Amy Amy
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Vermandel
Remembering the Frank and Hugely Missed Ms. Winehouse
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BECAUSE 14th September…
will mark Amy Winehouse’s fortieth birthday, I wanted to write a feature that celebrates her life and work. I am going to end with a playlist of her best cuts. Before I get there, I will pull together interviews around the releases of her two studio albums, Frank and Back to Black. That said, I think most of the Frank-era interviews are audio. That debut album was released in 2003 – we celebrate its twentieth anniversary in October. I am going to include a couple of reviews for her albums too. I might do another feature closer to 14th September. For now, a salute to the great Amy Winehouse. I remember when Frank came out. I had heard a bit about Amy Winehouse in 2003. There was a lot of buzz around her. It is clear that nobody like her was around in music! That was an instant revelation. An honest and very real artist who was very much herself and had this instantly intriguing and relatable personality, there were no pretences or ego when it came to her and the music or chat. I think one reason why critics did not jump on Frank was because they heard too many influences in the mix. Maybe a little indebted to some of her music heroes – such as Erykah Badu and Nina Simone -, it was nonetheless an assured and confident debut. With that blend of tenderness, sleaze, beauty, honesty, playfulness and that sublime voice, so many layers of Winehouse’s personality and musical DNA were on the display through the album!
I am going to come to one of the more positive reviews for Frank. Before that, in terms of the album’s success and legacy, Wikipedia provide us with some information and crucial detail. Frank was a chart success around the world. It is clear it has influenced many artists since it release. Everyone from Izzy Bizu, Lana Del Rey, and Billie Eilish have shades and elements of Amy Winehouse and her debut album (in addition to Back to Black):
“Winehouse was nominated for British Female Solo Artist and British Urban Act at the 2004 BRIT Awards, while Frank was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize that same year. The album earned Winehouse an Ivor Novello Award. In retrospective reviews for both Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, critic Douglas Wolk was ambivalent towards Winehouse's themes and felt that they are relevant to her public image at the time, writing in the former review, "in the light of her subsequent career, Frank comes off as the first chapter in the Romantic myth of the poet who feels too deeply and ends up killing herself for her audience's entertainment". By contrast, PopMatters writer Mike Joseph felt that the album shows that Winehouse's success is "based on pure talent rather than good producers or gimmicks". The Washington Post's Bill Friskics-Warren noted most of its content as "sultry ballads and shambling neo-soul jams", while writing that it "more than confirms what the fuss over Winehouse – then just 19 and with a lot fewer tattoos – was originally all about... her attitude and command were already there. And then some". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In 2019, the album was ranked 57th on The Guardian's 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century list”.
Before coming to a review for Frank, what about the history of the album and its impact? I think retrospective assessment sees it as this amazing introduction from an artist whose life was cut short. We sadly lost Amy Winehouse in July 2011 at the age of twenty-seven. Marking Frank’s fifteenth anniversary in 2018, Nick Levine for i-D wrote a fascinating feature exploring the depths and unknown facts about Amy Winehouse’s 2003 debut:
“Surely a better way to remember her brilliance is by revisiting her debut album Frank, which turns 15 years old this week. The album was well received at the time, but though she would win a prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award for lead single Stronger Than Me, Winehouse wasn't entirely happy with it. "Some things on this album make me go to a little place that's fucking bitter," she told The Observer in February 2004, just three months after it dropped. "I've never heard the album from start to finish. I don't have it in my house. Well, the marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible. Everything was a shambles."
Though Frank isn't as flawless as Winehouse's follow-up album, 2006's era-defining Back to Black, it's definitely better than her 2004 comments suggest. Sure, its significance is enhanced because it's one of just two studio albums she got to make (2011's Lioness: Hidden Treasures was a posthumous hodgepodge of previously unreleased material). But at the same time, Frank isn’t just a footnote. Featuring songs written when Winehouse was still a teenager, it offers thrilling glimpses of a unique and precocious musical talent. It's also an introduction to an icon who inspired everyone from Adele to Halsey, and Lady Gaga to Lana Del Rey.
Charles Moriarty, who photographed Winehouse for the album's cover, said recently that she conceived Frank as a "straight jazz-hip-hop cross". You can hear this musical fusion in highlights like Stronger Than Me, Fuck Me Pumps and October Song, where Winehouse's languid, jazzy melodies meet bold, bolshy beats. It's a combo that reflects not just Winehouse's taste in music — the album's title nods to Frank Sinatra, and she sulked about missing a Slick Rick gig on Back to Black — but her personality, too: Winehouse was as romantic as a jazz balladeer, but kept it real. When Simon Amstell suggested on Never Mind the Buzzcocks that she might want to "do something with Katie Melua", Winehouse replied: "I'd rather have cat AIDS, thank you."
Winehouse's cutting tongue is stunningly effective on Frank's saltiest track, Fuck Me Pumps, a savage character study that now feels like a trip back in time to the Footballer's Wives era of the early noughties. "Don’t be mad at me, 'cause you're pushing 30, and your old tricks no longer work," Winehouse sings on the final verse. It's unsisterly, but not quite cruel, because Winehouse has already revealed a begrudging admiration for the wannabe WAG at the song’s centre: "Without girls like you there’d be no fun, we’d go to the club and not see anyone."
Besides, she can be just as brutal about herself. On I Heard Love Is Blind, she admits to cheating on her partner because she could. "Baby, you weren't there," she shrugs. "And I was thinking of you when I came." Fifteen years later, the straight-up and shame-free way Winehouse writes about sexual desire still feels exciting, whether she's lusting over a co-worker on Amy Amy Amy, or hooking up with an ex on In My Bed. "She is a massive inspiration to me," Halsey told Teen Vogue in 2015. "She was strong but she was open about her sexuality and her life — I love her intentions, and I want to further her message but in my own way."
Not everything on Frank still sounds quite so forward-thinking. Stronger Than Me is a brilliantly-written song about wanting your partner to toughen up, but some of its lines don't fly in 2018, now we're not so into reinforcing gender stereotypes. "Always have to comfort you every day," she sings. "But that's what I need you to do, are you gay?" Similarly, her use of the phrase “lady boy” in the chorus is dated at best.
Musically, Winehouse was always a compelling contradiction: a young woman with an old-sounding voice who made music steeped in the past, but rooted in the present. When Frank was finally released in the US in 2007, after Back to Black had made her a global star, a Pitchfork review eerily predicted that "it comes off as the first chapter in the Romantic myth of the poet who feels too deeply and ends up killing herself for her audience's entertainment". The reviewer also accused her of imitating her favourite jazz vocalists "much too closely". Certainly, Frank's mid-album jazz covers, Moody's Mood for Love and (There Is) No Greater Love, feel like an unnecessary bridge to the past. We can hear in Winehouse's voice that she adores jazz music and feels it deeply; she doesn't need to spell it out for us.
But Frank's faults never threaten to spoil it as a body of work. This album merges old and new less seamlessly than Back to Black, and Winehouse probably didn't need as many co-writers as her label gave her, but her preternatural talent shines through. Just listen to Take the Box , a devastating ballad about returning to an ex's flat to pack up your possessions. "The Moschino bra you bought me last Christmas," she sings longingly, before backing vocalists urge her to "put it in the box, put it in the box”. Thanks to her incredibly vivid songwriting, we can picture exactly what she’s doing — we’re in the moment with her. And thanks to her incredible voice, we can feel every ounce of her sadness. On Frank, Amy Winehouse is already an artist like no other”.
I will move on to Back to Black soon. Before that, AllMusic provided their take on a hugely important debut album. If Back to Black was this true revelation and exploration of Amy Winehouse’s musical ability and promise – in terms of genres and the production sound –, then Frank was this fascinating and intimate portrait of a young artist who would, in her short life, inspire so many people:
“If a series of unfortunate comparisons (like the ones to follow) cause listeners to equate British vocalist Amy Winehouse with Macy Gray, it's only natural. Both come on like a hybrid of Billie Holiday and Lauryn Hill who's had a tipple and then attempted one more late-night set at a supper club than they should have. Despite her boozy persona and loose-limbed delivery, though, Winehouse is an excellent vocalist possessing both power and subtlety, the latter an increasingly rare commodity among contemporary female vocalists (whether jazz or R&B). What lifts her above Macy Gray is the fact that her music and her career haven't been marketed within an inch of their life. Instead of Gray's stale studio accompaniments, Winehouse has talented musicians playing loose charts behind her with room for a few solos. Instead of a series of vocal mellifluities programmed to digital perfection, Winehouse's record has the feeling of being allowed to grow on its own -- without being meddled with and fussed over (and losing its soul in the process). Simply hearing Winehouse vamp for a few minutes over some Brazilian guitar lines on "You Sent Me Flying" is a rare and immense pleasure. Also, like Nellie McKay (but unlike nearly all of her contemporaries), Winehouse songs like "Fuck Me Pumps," "Take the Box," and "I Heard Love Is Blind" cast a cool, critical gaze over the music scene, over the dating scene, and even over the singer herself. With "In My Bed," she even proves she can do a commercial R&B production, and a club version of "Moody's Mood for Love" not only solidifies her jazz credentials but proves she can survive in the age of Massive Attack”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Knott
I will end with a bit about Amy Winehouse’s amazing and enduring legacy. There are articles such as this, this, this, and this, that gives insight into he importance and brilliance of Amy Winehouse’s talent - and the legacy that she has left. Prior to getting there, the Irish Times published an interview in 2006. Jim Carroll spoke with Winehouse about Back to Black, in addition to her relationship with alcohol:
“No trouble
The reality? No one even looked up when Winehouse walked quietly into the bar. Sitting in an armchair, she's tiny, all beehive hair and lippy pout. There's a loud, filthy laugh every now and then, but that's the extent of things. No diva, no tantrums, no trouble.
Winehouse has kept the drama for her record. Back to Black is a belter, an album more bewitched, bothered and bewildered than pop ever gets to be these days. Split right down the middle with heartbreakers and soul shakers, it has Winehouse swapping the jazz lounge she frequented for her Frank debut for a basement where '50s and '60s girl groups hang out comparing their men and their hair-dos.
The new company suits Amy. Once you hear her magnificent defiance on the brassy and bold Rehab ("they tried to make me go to rehab," she sneers. "I said no, no, no"), you'll be hooked. As confessional, troubled, humorous and honest as songs get about a woman falling in and out of love with men, drink, weed and the gym, Back to Black is rousing and brave on every level. It's the sassiest, sharpest Motown album imaginable.
Winehouse talks fondly of the girl groups who inspired her, who provided a soundtrack for her musings, when she began writing songs for the new record. "The Shangri-Las, very dramatic and atmospheric. The Ronettes, very stylish. The Shirelles, they had coolness and attitude, they had vulnerability."
Vulnerability
Winehouse became fascinated with how those singers projected and protected their vulnerability. After all, some of them had desperate, depressing back-stories but were cooing like angels. "I loved those heartbreak songs they used to do, especially the way the girls sounded so heavenly. Yet they were also singing about the kind of heartbreak you would find at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. They knew all about sorrow."
When it came to Back to Black, Winehouse was more than ready to be heartbroken. While Frank had been a big old hit (250,000 sales, glowing critical reviews, an Ivor Novello award and a Mercury Music Prize nomination), Winehouse's personal demons were having a field day at her expense. Her relationship at the time was falling apart, leaving her to find solace in weed and booze. Something had to go. Scratch that; lots of things had to go.
"I don't smoke weed anymore so I'm not so defensive as I was back then," she says. "I'm not as insecure as I was either. I go to the gym, I run loads and I'm much healthier than I was.
"When I did my first album, I was smoking too much weed. I mean, I was really proud of that album at the time and I still think the songs are up to scratch. But you have to remember I had never made an album before. When you have a producer with you who is far more experienced, you do tend to become a bit 'yeah, that's cool' in the studio and go with the flow. And when you're smoking weed, you just don't care about anything except who has the next joint."
Relationship change
Another change has been in the relationship with her record label. After Frank was released in 2004, she slammed what she saw as their inefficiencies. "The marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible, everything was a shambles," she railed in one memorable interview at the time.
Now? "It was my first album and I didn't know what I was doing so I was learning as I went along. I don't think the label had a clue what to do with it either, so it was a learning curve for them as well - and they had to deal with me mouthing off all over the place! This time, I know what is going on so I'm better prepared. And the label know how to deal with me as well."
The next heave-ho was her management. When Winehouse first emerged, all queries were directed to pop svengali Simon Fuller.
"It was never right," is how the singer now considers this dalliance with the man behind The Spice Girls and Pop Idol. "My manager on paper was not the person doing the day-to-day stuff. He was a lovely fellow but he didn't care about music. He was definitely one of those people who left their work in the office. I needed someone else, I needed someone who really cared."
More karma
You also no longer find Winehouse being so lippy to her fellow pop stars. This means less entertaining quotes for the masses (Katie Melua was once summed up as someone "singing shit songs that her manager writes for her"). But Winehouse thinks about this change in more karmic terms. "I have stopped slagging people off as much as I did. Not because I think it will sell more records or it looks bad for me, but because I don't wish anything bad against anyone. Everyone has a job to do."
Winehouse takes another sip from a glass of red wine. Of course, one vice remains. "I do drink a lot, and I'm a bad drunk, a very violent drunk," she says. "It's only since I started going out with my boyfriend Alex that I have realised what a horrible drunk I am.
"My ex-boyfriend would be saying things like 'stop doing that, you're an idiot' and rowing with me when I was drunk, which just made me worse. With Alex, he will bring it up the following day when I've sobered up. It really embarrasses me to hear I've punched him in the face six times. Again."
Winehouse winces. "Of course, it does make me want to cut down on the booze. I really do try not to drink, but I'm a very self-destructive person."
There's a soft smile on her face now. "I keep saying to my boyfriend that he can take it. I'm a little girl, he's a big guy."
Still, no matter how much of a "bad drunk" she is, we won't likely see Winehouse joining the boozy and stoned celebs shoring up a rehab clinic in the near future.
"Do you really think I could be pushed into doing anything I didn't want to do like that?" There was one attempt at rehab and that didn't get very far. "It was my old management's idea. I literally walked in and walked out. I knew it wasn't for me.
"Some people go to rehab and treat it like Butlins. Some people go because they think it will really sort them out and it does. But me, I'm from the school which believes that you can only sort yourself out, you can't rely on other people to sort out your problems”.
Produced by Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, there is a whole thread and world dedicated to exploring the legacy of Back to Black. I might dedicate another feature to that. I want to source a review from Entertainment Weekly. Number one in the U.K. and number two in the U.S., Back to Black is one of the most important and successful albums of the 2000s. At the 2008 Grammy Awards, it won Best Pop Vocal Album and was also nominated for Album of the Year. Winehouse herself won four additional awards, tying her with five other artists as the second-most-awarded female in a single ceremony. Back to Black was also nominated at the 2007 BRIT Awards for MasterCard British Album. It was also shortlisted for the 2007 Mercury Prize. Back to Black sold 3.58 million copies in the U.K., becoming the country’s second-best-selling album of the 21st century so far. Back to Black has sold over 16 million copies worldwide:
“What’s with all the offbeat, retro-minded British divas hitting our shores? Do the pop-reggae Lily Allen, the folky Corinne Bailey Rae, the classic-soul Joss Stone, and the nouveau-R&B Amy Winehouse represent a new vanguard? Or is it simply that, with domestic innovators like Erykah Badu off the radar, nature abhors a vacuum? Is it a bandwagon effect from Gnarls Barkley’s ”Crazy,” last year’s offbeat and retro-minded (albeit American-made) pop-soul smash?
Clearly there’s a trend here. Winehouse, a 23-year-old North London bad girl who resembles a tarted-up Sarah Silverman, is already a tabloid phenomenon at home, where Back To Black, her second CD, hit No. 1 on the pop charts in January. And by most any measure, she is the best of the bunch.
First there’s her vocal style, which bears traces of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington in its jazzy phrasing and tonality. It was impressive on Frank, her 2003 debut, even if her melismata needed a shorter leash. But on the tougher, tighter Back To Black, her vocals are reined in and laser-focused.
Much of it is produced by Mark Ronson, a DJ and vintage-R&B fan who has also worked with Lily Allen. His ear for period detail is remarkable, and without leaning on old samples, he makes the disc sound like an oldies mixtape with hip-hop-minded beats. The Motownish single ”Rehab” chugs along on Wurlitzer organ, baritone sax, and hand claps. ”You Know I’m No Good” stokes a dreamy groove with old-school Memphis horns. ”Tears Dry On Their Own” borrows from the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic ”Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” And the title track conjures the Shangri-Las, despite a reference to the male anatomy that surely would’ve made the ’60s girl-group heroines blush.
It’s precisely Winehouse’s lyrics — smartass, aching, flirty, and often straight-up nasty — that raise this expertly crafted set into the realm of true, of-the-minute originality. There are moments when that originality flags with boilerplate lover’s bellyaching (”Love is a fate resigned/Memories mar my mind”). But Winehouse always surprises — dropping a sly reference to Sammy Davis Jr. on the doo-wop-flavored ”Me & Mr. Jones” or complaining to a girlfriend about the latter’s marijuana-grubbing boyfriend on ”Addicted” (a highlight of the U.K. release, inexplicably pulled from the American CD). All told, it’s a near-perfect set that declares not just the arrival of a fully formed talent, but possibly the first major salvo of a new British Invasion. A-“.
PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley for NME
I am going to end with a feature from NME from 2021. Looking back at Winehouse’s legacy a decade after her tragic passing, it is clear that there was nobody like her – and we will never see anyone like her again. Ahead of her fortieth birthday next month, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the incredible impact and influence of Winehouse:
“Think of the icons who have changed the shape of popular music forever, and few tower as high as Amy Winehouse and her unmistakable beehive. Breaking through in the early ‘00s like a gale-force wind that gleefully rucked up pop’s carefully-ironed tablecloth, the sharp-witted, soul-and-jazz-loving Londoner stood out in a landscape of shimmering US pop stars and perfectly choreographed girl bands. Fusing vintage sounds with her biting storytelling, Winehouse was refreshing, exciting and – above everything else – a raw and honest voice.
Amy Winehouse died a decade ago this Friday (July 23), aged 27, leaving behind a huge musical legacy. Following her passing, countless artists paid tribute to an enormous talent. “Amy changed pop music forever,” Lady Gaga tweeted in 2011. “I remember knowing there was hope, and feeling not alone because of her. She lived jazz, she lived the blues.” In another post, Adele thanked Winehouse for “[paving] the way for artists like me”, adding that she “made people excited about British music again whilst being fearlessly hilarious and blase about the whole thing. I don’t think she ever realized just how brilliant she was and how important she is, but that just makes her even more charming.” The late George Michael accurately called her “the most soulful vocalist this country has ever seen.”
Now, 10 years on from her death, fans, collaborators and fellow musicians pay tribute. “I still remember the first time I heard her on the radio, I was totally hooked,” recalls Shannon, a long-time Amy Winehouse fan who became hooked on her 2003 debut album ‘Frank’ in her early teens, and went to see some of the star’s earliest headline shows. Years later, she was at V Festival with her mates when surprise guest Winehouse casually sauntered on stage to perform ‘You’re Wondering Now’ and ‘Ghost Town’ with The Specials.
Every time she watched Winehouse live was “just magic,” Shannon says, adding: “She totally allowed herself to be completely raw and vulnerable – and that voice too! She was my first proper music idol. She was just so cool, and the music blew my mind.”
That 2009 appearance with The Specials wasn’t Amy’s only unexpected link-up – she also performed with The Rolling Stones (at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2009) and Prince (in London in 2007), among others. Scissor Sisters’ lead singer and solo artist Jake Shears also recalls heading out on little-documented tour of “end-of-year college banquets” with the star early in their careers, soundtracking the dinners of a couple of hundred students each night. “I like thinking back to that time because you just just never know where everything’s going to end up – it was early days for us,” Shears tells NME. “It was such a cool time.”
A chance encounter with The Zutons’ lead singer on a night out in Winehouse’s regular stomping ground in Camden, meanwhile, led to her wildly popular cover of their staple song ‘Valerie’, which remains one of her most popular songs 14 years after its release. “Years ago I was in Camden and I was in The Hawley Arms, drinking and all that,” recalls the band’s vocalist Dave McCabe. “And then Amy Winehouse turns up”.
Though the pair had crossed paths at the Mercury Prize in 2004, they barely knew each other, and later that night, “this lad” at the pub started bad-mouthing The Zutons. “He basically started telling me how crap I was, and how great [Winehouse] was, and at the time I was like, ‘Fair enough’”. McCabe laughs. “By about the 10th time, he was just being a bit annoying. I ended up just turning around to him, and told him to fuck off. Then [Amy] turned around to me went, ‘No – you fuck off!’’
Eventually, McCabe stormed off down the road with Winehouse in hot pursuit. “She goes: ‘Come back! I really like ‘Valerie’. I’m not really arsed about you, but you must be alright ‘causes you wrote that song.’ So we worked it out, and I went back. I think if we hadn’t had that argument… That moment was very personal. I’d like to think it’s what pushed her [to record the song herself]. Maybe something good came of all of that stupid argument?” he laughs.
“I met her since then, and I thanked her [for covering ‘Valerie’ in 2007],” he adds. “I was chuffed that she covered [it]. I remember it hit me when I was in a pub playing pool, and the [The Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games] came on – there were people dancing and stuff like that, and then that song came on. In the opening ceremony! It struck me then just how fucking big that that version of the song was. I didn’t wanna burst out crying in the middle of the pub or nothing, so I had to go away to the toilet; I was like, ‘Fucking hell that was emotional’, but in a nice way. It doesn’t feel like it’s our song any more; it feels like it’s its own world.”
Winehouse took the twanging riffs of the original, drawing out its more soulful components alongside producer Mark Ronson, unearthing a totally different character and melody. “I don’t think anyone else could have just picked it up and sung it like that,” McCabe says. “Even when I think of the song now, I think of how she sings it – that’s just what it has become. I don’t think anyone else in the world could have done that. I think it shows the strength and talent and everything she had. It could be an easy song to cover, an easy ticket – but she took it to this whole new level.”
Along with Winehouse’s ‘Frank’ collaborator Salaam Remi, Ronson produced half of Amy Winehouse’s landmark second album, 2006’s ‘Back to Black’. Together, they made for a formidable pairing – from the parping ‘Rehab’ to the smoke-stained regret of ‘Love is a Losing Game’, they forged a pop sound that dabbled in retro influences, and would influence the entire musical landscape after the album’s release.
Though Winehouse counted ‘60s girl groups, Motown and classic soul as influences – and enlisted Sharon Jones’ band The Dap-Kings to back her – the record veers away from being derivative, instead centring around Winehouse’s unmistakable vocal and vibrant lyrical voice. “He left no time to regret,” she sings in the opening lines of the title-track, her voice cracking with anger. “Kept his dick wet / With his same old safe bet.” It was cutting, fiercely witty, and unmistakably Winehouse – and across ‘Back to Black’, the searing one-liners kept coming.
“I can sometimes hear ‘Back To Black’ in some restaurant in the background and it does nothing, and then I’ll hear it on another occasion in, like, the lobby of a hotel, and it has a really heavy effect on me,” Mark Ronson told NME in 2019. “She kinda put me on the map, so all of my success and everything I’ve had since is somehow linked back to this thing.”
Though ‘Back To Black’ was Winehouse’s masterpiece, her slightly lighter debut album ‘Frank’ still established Winehouse as a fearsomely talented songwriter. ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ finds Winehouse’s narrator bluntly defending infidelity with increasingly creative twists of logic: “Baby, you weren’t there,” she insists, “and I was thinking of you when I came”. And the matter-of-fact ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ is both biting and hilarious, meticulously mocking a woman and her garish shoes.
“Her legacy is beyond comprehension,” singer-songwriter Laura Mvula tells NME. “I think people will still be unfolding it for decades to come.” The Birmingham artist, who recently melded her love of soul, jazz and blues music with bright, disco-tinged pop on latest album ‘Pink Noise’, cites Winehouse as a huge influence – “particularly her vocal style”.
Alongside articles and pieces keeping Amy Winehouse’s music and importance very much alive and at the forefront, there is the Amy Winehouse Foundation. A vital and inspiring charity aimed to provide resilience work for young people, music therapy and recovery housing for young women (among other things), it is a wonderful nod to a much-missed artist. Someone whose music has surely helped countless people. On 14th September, fans around the world will mark what would have been Amy Winehouse’s fortieth birthday. I often wonder what she would be doing if she was still with us. I think that there would have been a few new albums. Maybe a residency in the U.S. and worldwide tours. Perhaps a step into films. It is heartbreaking dreaming what could have been. Instead, we should celebrate what she gave us. Even though we lost her at twenty-seven, Frank and Back to Black are albums that will be talked about and remembered for decades to come! There is no doubting the fact that the wonderful and hugely loved Amy Winehouse was…
A musical supernova.