The jazz clubs turned into tour stages and screaming fans. In 2008, she performed to 130,000 people in Glastonbury, Somerset, England, wearing a cobalt dress and island umbrellas in her hair. She still rocked the stage in her signature updo, sporting black messy hair with strands illuminated by the backlight of the setting sun. She closes the night with Rehab, saying No, No, No while waving both hands goodbye to enthusiastic cheers.
So what did Amy Winehouse do? She wrote music, strummed a guitar, belted songs from an apartment balcony, and annoyed her brother to no end. “She was an enigma, a strange, no— intriguing sister, and I could never really figure her out,” her brother, Alex Winehouse, would say in an interview with The Guardian. Her passion for music and craftsmanship was evident since birth.
Amy Winehouse was born on September 14th, 1983, in North London. She’d always loved music. Around the age of fourteen, she received a guitar and began writing compositions. The same year, she was expelled from Sylvia Young Theatre School for wearing a nose ring. Yet, her rebellious attitude remained firmly attached to her being. Later, she would attend the prestigious BRIT School, where she excelled in singing, which catalyzed her work with jazz and landed her a spot in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. Then, she started making music with her friends who would later become integral parts of the jazz band that followed her across the globe, named The Amy Winehouse Band.
She met Blake Fielder-Civil in 2005, tipsy in a club in Camden. They were both up-and-coming musicians who loved classic rock. They laughed and joked all night, and it was “love at first sight” for both of them. Civil would recall that he was initially embarrassed when Winehouse suggested she would sing for him at the bar. When he heard the voice of an angel rumbling next to him, his sober mind knew it would be blasphemy to let her go. In an interview with The Guardian, Winehouse was asked, “What or who is the greatest love of your life?” After a moment, she responded with “Falling in love itself.”
The pair were on and off: their relationship was rocky from the start. The tumultuous experience wounded Winehouse, with her claiming that Civil left her to waste when they weren’t together. Winehouse and Civil were young, but both of them had extensive histories with drug abuse and alcoholism. The ‘Ups’ of their relationships left Winehouse wanting more. The ‘Downs’ of their relationship led her back to the bar they’d met in.
It was the middle of March 2006 when she began writing her second album, ‘Back to Black.’ She met with producer Mark Ronson, a famed British musician and songwriter, and they wrote the title track “Back to Black” overnight. The next five or six songs, as Winehouse remembered, were fleshed out for two weeks. The songs tackled topics similar to those that plagued her life: drug addiction, abuse, and her recent separations from Civil. Which is to say: she had a lot to get off her mind.
Contemporary R&B and soul heavily influenced the album. Of course, she made sure to add in the sounds of 1960s music, giving her album the ‘old-timey’ feel. The backtracks of every song fit her deeper vocals perfectly. Winehouse’s gripping, country-but-not-American-country, rolling tone had made it to the limelight.
11 songs and 34 minutes. Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Me & Mr Jones, Just Friends, Back to Black, Love is a Losing Game, Tears Dry On Their Own, Wake Up Alone, Some Unholy War, He Can Only Hold Her, Addicted. “I guess, um, from being around the block, I guess people know that I don’t really do what people tell me to do. Or, that I don’t really care enough about what people think of me— to conform to anything,” Amy Winehouse said to a CNN reporter for a 2007 interview regarding the release of her album Back to Black. This album was her Mona Lisa, her magnum opus, and her wildest ambitions melded into one.
“Rehab,” was about her struggles with drug addiction. “He said, “I just think you’re depressed.” / This, me: “Yeah, baby, and the rest.” The internal struggle with recovery, mental illness, and addiction played a major role throughout her lyrics.
“Back to Black,” evidently inspired by her experience with infidelity. “He had no time to regret. / And my tears dry. / You went back to what you knew. / So far removed.” The song references her relationship with Blake-Fielder Civil, and his return to a past girlfriend: “When the love was too far removed.” She was attached, and as Winehouse told a reporter at Rolling Stone in 2007, “I had never felt the way I feel about him about anyone in my life.” The song succeeded in being a major hit, and her unresolved angst and unfiltered pain cut through in every successive performance.
The music video of “Tears Dry On Their Own” features Winehouse waiting in a motel and walking down a crowded street, wearing a baby blue minidress.“Even if I stop wanting you, a perspective pushes through / I’ll be some next man’s other woman soon / I cannot play myself again, I should just be my own best friend.” She was waiting for someone who wouldn’t see her standing alone in a crowded area.
Then, there was the aftermath.
Winehouse never loved the press, and the press never loved her. After the initial success of her album, she became the favorite of dozens of UK tabloids. She was an easy target: young, vulnerable, and a rising star in an industry of bloodthirsty vultures. Discussion and love for her newest songs devolved into ‘scandalous’ articles about her long-standing drug addiction and disordered eating. Her music exploring addiction and infidelity made her fodder for sensationalized media coverage.
A supposed night out with friends smoking in Scotland Yard turned into scandalous headlines bashing the young singer for months. “She lost herself, she lost her identity,” people would comment under these scurrilous articles. After years of sensationalized coverage and adverse attention, perhaps Winehouse was starting to believe the mocking voices, too.
On July 23rd, 2011, Amy Jade Winehouse passed away in her London home at the age of 27. The official cause of death was accidental alcohol poisoning. A funeral and vigil were held three days later, with the former being a private affair and the latter a public mourning. The vigil was held in Camden, the same city where Amy had spent most of her life. Hundreds of visitors donated flowers and paintings of the late singer. The scene was quiet, with the only noise being the occasional shutter of a camera. Someone taped a poem to a tree, with the final stanza reading: “I am the soft stars that shine at night, Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die.”
The world mourned the loss of an angel. Die-hard fans took to scrutinizing every moment of Winehouse’s life, trying to connect the loose threads she left behind. Within months, the tabloid tirade against the late singer fizzled out.
The Amy Winehouse Band still tours the world in Winehouse’s memory, performing her classics to enthusiastic audiences. Today, you can find them touring several countries in Europe, including the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy & Sweden. After her death, her family started the Amy Winehouse Foundation on the anniversary of what would have been Amy’s 28th birthday. The foundation sponsors recovery programs for young women, provides music therapy to children, and connects young hopefuls with music projects outside of the UK.
And of course, her album, Back To Black, remains a timeless classic. It’s an album that inspired countless young musicians to pursue their passion. It’s an album that attracted hundreds of thousands of loyal fans who honor her legacy to this day. It’s an album that stayed courageous and wasn’t afraid to face the taboo of drug addiction and infidelity. The album is by Winehouse and in memory of Amy.
“I guess, um, from being around the block, I guess people know that I don’t really do what people tell me to do. Or, that I don’t really care enough about what people think of me— to conform to anything,” Amy Winehouse said to a CNN reporter for a 2007 interview regarding the release of her album Back to Black.