Singer Amy Winehouse dead at 27

I first remember hearing that name in 2004. A film producer in London said he had evoked her interest in acting in a punk-Dracula remake and could finance the film based on having her name attached. I listened to her music sometime shortly thereafter and was transfixed. Winehouse was a truly unique talent with a voice that harkened back to another era. Shame then what became of her foreshortened career due to drugs and alcohol and the company she kept, all part and parcel of the self-destructive image she projected. Amy Winehouse was found dead on Friday at her Camden abode (July 23^rd) aged 27. As for talent, she had all the makings of what perhaps could have become a voice and a spirit akin to Nina Simone had she lived to overcome her addictions.

Ms. Winehouse’s music, up to the point where she left us, was deeply expressive, divinely gifted, but also overshadowed by her rollercoaster of a private life. The British newsmedia all too often focused solely on her troubles and the stories run about her were primarily about her drug and alcohol issues as well as that of her co-dependent and physically abusive relationship with her husband, the drug dealer and junkie Blake Fielder-Civil. The newspapers all too quickly began drawing parallels between Ms. Winehouse’s exploits with Fielder-Civil and those of their punk counterparts Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon.

At 16 Ms. Winehouse dropped out of school and began singing with a band. At 18 she signed a deal with Island Records and got her own apartment in Camden, a trendy suburb of northern London. In 2003 she was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize among a list of other awards. In 2004 she won an Ivor Novello for her first single, Stronger Than Me.

In 2005 she met Blake Fielder-Civil in a pub in Camden town. Fielder-Civil was already in a relationship but that didn’t stop him from embarking on an affair with Ms. Winehouse. As she said, she smoked too much marijuana with him and drank more than she thought was good for her, and began the downward spiral prompted doubtlessly in part by her Fielder-Civil relationship that was on-and-off till 2007.

Ms. Winehouse became notorious for drunken appearances, one which she had to excuse herself to hurl. In 2006 at an awards ceremony she yelled out over a Bono acceptance speech: “Shut up! I don’t give a fuck!”

Inspired by a break up with Fielder-Civil after about a year, Ms. Winehouse released Back to Black. The album sold over a million copies in the UK and entered the charts in the US at no. 7, the highest entry made by a British female. In 2007 she won Best British Female at the Brit Awards.

Ms. Winehouse’s fan found further interest in her songs of black moods and depression in her hit song Rehab, released in 2006. In April 2007 she got back together with Fielder-Civil and the couple was married in May in an $90 ceremony in Miami.

After the wedding, Ms. Winehouse’s partying became exceedingly dangerous. She admitted to not knowing how she received marks of abuse on her body: “I have no idea. I hate that. The blackouts. Happens too often.” On stage, as her drug problem increased, her performances got worse. In August she went to rehab for the use of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol. Sadly, she only stuck to it for three days before leaving. She was eventually investigated for smoking crack-cocaine, but the investigation proved inconclusive.

All in all, she believed she was not here to be a singer but to be a homemaker: “I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mum and to look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends.”

In 2007 her father Mitch wrote an obituary, believing that perhaps her end was not far off. The event of Friday night was a very tragic end to a very sad story. Our hearts go out to those left behind in the tragic aftermath of Ms. Winehouse’s death.