Amy Winehouse four years earlier. Credit: daniel arnold (CC-BY-SA 2.0 Generic)
“She was an extraordinary musician with a rare intuition as a vocalist and I am truly devastated that her exceptional talent has come to such an early end,” Tony Bennett said of the lady he had recently recorded duets with, Amy Winehouse. “…an artist of immense proportions.”
As a child in North London (Southgate area), Winehouse was often crooned by her Sinatra-loving father where she constantly sang in school to the irritation of her teachers. Winehouse taught herself guitar and wrote songs by age 14. She began earning real money soon after (including as a entertainment journalist) and her distinctive sound quickly attracted a number of record production suiters.
An interesting footnote is how Winehouse was kept a secret by one management group while they carefully ‘developed’ what they considered a genuine diamond in the rough.
Her first album came in 2003 with the jazz-influenced Frank, where every song was written by Winehouse. International success arrived four years later with Back to Black, with its seamless classic pop, soul, jazz, rock and Winehouse‘s uncategorized voice. Newsweek said she was “a perfect storm of sex kitten, raw talent and poor impulse control.”
Winehouse said that her smash album took so long because she suffered from writer’s block and that self-worth was linked to her creativity. Back to Black won five Grammys and threw Winehouse (with her distinctive catty eyes, beehive hair, ancient mariner-like tatoos) into a shade of limelight she may not have wanted to go.
From September 2006 through the summer of ’07, Winehouse performed live, showing audiences that she was a genuine crowd-pleasing performer, but her show unraveled with a tour two months later. In Burmingham, Winehouse reportedly slurred her words, stumbled along the stage, and when booed began crying and swearing at the audience. The tour was canceled.
There were a few bursts of talent afterward, but nothing too original and everything often wound back to overindulgence and rehab.
Winehouse always remained popular with her fans, and so many covered her home today with floral displays, not far from where she last performed (for a moment) with her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield just three days ago.