Amy Winehouse: troubled track
In an industry that likes its women impeccably presented and insistently positive, Amy Winehouse was always something of a misfit. She provided some respite from the manufactured pop-princess image, but her alternative was far harder to swallow.
The contemplative media response following her recent death has struggled to make sense of her troubled talent; for every inch of newsprint filled with heart-wrenching tributes there is another inch of cyber-space dedicated to dismissive “junkie” insults.
From the start of her turbulent career Winehouse produced defiant, honest music that competed with the catchy pop anthems at the top of the charts. Heralded as one of Britain’s greatest songwriters, her voice expressed the emotions behind her autobiographical lyrics. They reveal a crushing self-awareness coupled with a sense of inevitable loss, and they chronicle her desperate attempts to numb her pain.
In addressing these hefty subjects Winehouse earned herself comparisons with Aretha Franklin and Billie Holiday. Here was another tortured soul bravely belting out numbers about the melancholy of love. Her soulful sound pays tribute to sixties jazz and motown, but her lyrics are domestic and expletive.
She was always teetering on the brink of being shambolic and obscene. This was a different type of female sexuality; Winehouse was not quite the ‘mad woman in the attic’ but she sang about her desires in a way that was untamed and guttural.
Even her style confronted the “ready-made” pop stars around her: “I don't want to be the prettiest or the sexiest […] I just want to look different and to look like me.”[i] With her skewed bee-hive barnet, exaggerated Cleopatra eyeliner and retro tattoos she resembled The Ronettes at a Halloween party.
Her alcoholism, drug-abuse and mental health issues came to dominate her reputation as well as her music. Increasingly she became the target of tabloid gossip columns, appearing in blood-stained ballet slippers after a fight with ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil in 2007 and punching a fan at a Glastonbury gig in 2008.
Whilst her first album Frank had been a success, it was Back To Black which secured her position as the latest supernova and the world prepared itself to watch her self-destruct.
The album is full of remorse, with Amy crooning about “this regret I got accustomed to”. With a kind of fierce fatalism she turns to alcohol and drugs as an escape from heartache; “I’m gonna lose my baby, so I always keep a bottle near.”
In a touching eulogy celebrity Russell Brand writes; “The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living […] with some purchased relief.”[ii] This is not the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ of a ‘glamorous’ celebrity lifestyle. It’s the depressed dependency of a young woman living alone in Camden.
As the world watched her slowly disintegrate, she channelled her hurt into her music. “I didn't want to just wake up drinking, and crying […] and go to sleep, and wake up drinking […] So I turned it into songs, and that's how I got through it."[iii]
Suffering for your art may be an old adage but art cannot succeed as a substitute saviour. At her last ever performance Winehouse struggled to hold it together, staggering around and mumbling incomprehensibly. The last song that she performed was a cover of ‘You’re Wondering Now’. Its mischievous calypso beat was missing in this rendition, which was strained and eerily final:
You're wondering now, what to do, now you know this is the end.
You're wondering how, you will pay, for the way you misbehaved.
[…] I won't return, forever you will wait.
These are not the only lyrics that sound ominous in retrospect. In ‘Rehab’ she stubbornly resists help and in ‘Back To Black’ she acknowledges: “I tread a troubled track, my odds are stacked.” Amy Winehouse seemed to know what she was creating for herself, singing; “I cheated myself, like I knew I would. I told you that I was trouble, and you know that I’m no good.”
In fact, perhaps the most troubling thing of all about her death is that in her lyrics she’d effectively written her own obituary.
This article is the first of a regular column called 'Crossing the Culture' which I will be contributing to Evangelicals Now.
[i] Guardian, September 2004, www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2004/sep/18/fashion.amywinehouse
[ii] Guardian, July 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/24/russell-brand-amy-winehouse-woman
[iii]LA Times, March 2007, www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-winehouse17mar17,0,1781350.story
The contemplative media response following her recent death has struggled to make sense of her troubled talent; for every inch of newsprint filled with heart-wrenching tributes there is another inch of cyber-space dedicated to dismissive “junkie” insults.
From the start of her turbulent career Winehouse produced defiant, honest music that competed with the catchy pop anthems at the top of the charts. Heralded as one of Britain’s greatest songwriters, her voice expressed the emotions behind her autobiographical lyrics. They reveal a crushing self-awareness coupled with a sense of inevitable loss, and they chronicle her desperate attempts to numb her pain.
In addressing these hefty subjects Winehouse earned herself comparisons with Aretha Franklin and Billie Holiday. Here was another tortured soul bravely belting out numbers about the melancholy of love. Her soulful sound pays tribute to sixties jazz and motown, but her lyrics are domestic and expletive.
She was always teetering on the brink of being shambolic and obscene. This was a different type of female sexuality; Winehouse was not quite the ‘mad woman in the attic’ but she sang about her desires in a way that was untamed and guttural.
Even her style confronted the “ready-made” pop stars around her: “I don't want to be the prettiest or the sexiest […] I just want to look different and to look like me.”[i] With her skewed bee-hive barnet, exaggerated Cleopatra eyeliner and retro tattoos she resembled The Ronettes at a Halloween party.
Her alcoholism, drug-abuse and mental health issues came to dominate her reputation as well as her music. Increasingly she became the target of tabloid gossip columns, appearing in blood-stained ballet slippers after a fight with ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil in 2007 and punching a fan at a Glastonbury gig in 2008.
Whilst her first album Frank had been a success, it was Back To Black which secured her position as the latest supernova and the world prepared itself to watch her self-destruct.
The album is full of remorse, with Amy crooning about “this regret I got accustomed to”. With a kind of fierce fatalism she turns to alcohol and drugs as an escape from heartache; “I’m gonna lose my baby, so I always keep a bottle near.”
In a touching eulogy celebrity Russell Brand writes; “The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living […] with some purchased relief.”[ii] This is not the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ of a ‘glamorous’ celebrity lifestyle. It’s the depressed dependency of a young woman living alone in Camden.
As the world watched her slowly disintegrate, she channelled her hurt into her music. “I didn't want to just wake up drinking, and crying […] and go to sleep, and wake up drinking […] So I turned it into songs, and that's how I got through it."[iii]
Suffering for your art may be an old adage but art cannot succeed as a substitute saviour. At her last ever performance Winehouse struggled to hold it together, staggering around and mumbling incomprehensibly. The last song that she performed was a cover of ‘You’re Wondering Now’. Its mischievous calypso beat was missing in this rendition, which was strained and eerily final:
You're wondering now, what to do, now you know this is the end.
You're wondering how, you will pay, for the way you misbehaved.
[…] I won't return, forever you will wait.
These are not the only lyrics that sound ominous in retrospect. In ‘Rehab’ she stubbornly resists help and in ‘Back To Black’ she acknowledges: “I tread a troubled track, my odds are stacked.” Amy Winehouse seemed to know what she was creating for herself, singing; “I cheated myself, like I knew I would. I told you that I was trouble, and you know that I’m no good.”
In fact, perhaps the most troubling thing of all about her death is that in her lyrics she’d effectively written her own obituary.
This article is the first of a regular column called 'Crossing the Culture' which I will be contributing to Evangelicals Now.
[i] Guardian, September 2004, www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2004/sep/18/fashion.amywinehouse
[ii] Guardian, July 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jul/24/russell-brand-amy-winehouse-woman
[iii]LA Times, March 2007, www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-winehouse17mar17,0,1781350.story
