It has been ten years since Amy Winehouse’s death on July 23, 2011. With a decade in absence of one of the world’s most iconic musicians, I think it is important to look back and understand why she made such a big impact on the music industry, and — most importantly — why she became an icon at all.
Few would hesitate to say that Amy Winehouse reshaped the music scene. After her debut album Frank, which went mostly unrecognized by the wider public, she floored the world with her unstereotypical sound and irreverent image once Back to Black reached the ears of listeners across the world. Her jazz-inspired, eclectic range of music paved the way for many British female artists, including today’s mega-stars like Adele, while her visual mix of London’s high-end subculture fashion with humorously crass attitude strongly cemented her anti-mainstream status. For many people, she became a fixation: someone who consistently provided enough material for malignantly scrupulous attention.
Of course, one could say this was because she continuously flooded the media with her tumultuous drug and alcohol abuse, but I wouldn’t say her troubled image was the reason why people cared so much about the personal details of her life. In fact, I always thought that her relentlessly honest and occasionally brusque attitude was probably the real “culprit” behind her worshipped persona.
She was witty, unrefined in speech and manner, and sometimes overly presumptuous, which did not align with an unobjectionable image that a star of her caliber was supposed to portray. This dichotomy made her an icon in the eyes of both the dazed fan base and the gossip-hungry media. Sadly, the majority of the public only wanted to see the widely-publicized image of Amy Winehouse — the troubled and drama-ridden diva who was not able to keep up with the hurdles and frenzy thrown at her by the unforgiving paparazzi. The disheartening reality is that she was never emotionally equipped to be a star. Her purpose always rested in her art.
That is probably the most important notion to remember about Amy Winehouse: that, at heart, she was an artist — a true musician and primarily a splendid lyricist — but not a performer or an entertainer. Her earlier live performances were certainly memorable (especially when her backup vocalists Zalon and Ade became regulars on her tours), but her essence was deeply imprinted in her albums and, most notably, in her songwriting. In that sense, her iconic status was not supposed to be based on her image but rather on her music.
Much of this, however, has already been said in Asif Kapadia’s fantastic 2015 documentary Amy, so it may be more valuable to mention what her music meant to me, a longtime fan of her work. When I first heard her music, which was just around the time “Rehab” started climbing the charts, I was initially drawn to her sound. There weren’t any artists at the time, at least to my knowledge, who were rooted in jazz origins, drawing from the likes of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Donny Hathaway, and who seamlessly incorporated accessibility in their music.
There was something unique, though not necessarily unprecedented, in Amy Winehouse’s music, but it took me a while to realize that it was the surprisingly compatible combination of her highbrow jazz influences and the catchy girl group sound — in addition to her extraordinary vocals — that made her music so distinctive.
Over time, I grew to appreciate the entirety of her work, from the tracks on Frank and Back to Black to the posthumous Lioness: Hidden Treasures, reggae- and ska-inspired covers on her B-sides, as well as some lesser known gems, such as her cover of Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” with Quincy Jones.
Even more importantly, I started to value her incredible songwriting. Her lyrics notably changed from Frank to Back to Black, transforming from narrative storytelling to chorus-centered verses, but her ability to write about varying aspects of life, whether it was love, adultery, or simply getting angry over having to share weed, in a highly poetic way remained consistent throughout all her life.
I also appreciated that she portrayed a timeless sense of love in her music. Many artists at the time, and even more so today, recorded songs that centered on denying any traces of love in the search of personal empowerment, resulting in songs that very quickly began to sound worn-out and uninspiring.
Amy Winehouse, on the other hand, wrote songs that told the same story of how much pain she was willing to go through just to sustain her sense of love. Granted, such lyrics conveyed a certain dose of self-inflicted tragedy, but I always thought it was incredibly refreshing and courageous to have a modern female artist who was not afraid to put the entirety of her body and soul in her music.
There are three songs of Amy Winehouse that everyone should listen to at least a few times in their lives to truly appreciate her brilliance. “You Sent Me Flying,” a song from her debut album Frank, shows her masterfully narrating and pitch-perfect singing through a dazzling jazz track, which will surely satisfy every music buff out there.
“Wake Up Alone,” a heartbreaking ballad from Back to Black, showcases some of the most brilliant songwriting I have ever read. It is a heart-stopping poem that captures the unnerving anxiety of loneliness, and will induce empathetic feelings even in those who have not experienced the same feelings on such a profound level.
Finally, “Addicted,” the last song on Back to Black and another example of fantastic songwriting, best displays Amy Winehouse’s entertaining wit as she humorously laments having to share weed with her roommate’s boyfriend, and that, from now on, she’ll “check him at the door, make sure he got green,” and that she will be “tighter than airport security teams.”
These songs succinctly show why she was — and will always remain — an icon: because she was a witty poet who wrote songs that reflected what we all felt and knew, but were often unable to express in words. In many ways, her warm and romantic nature thrived in her songs, and always awaited to be discovered by those who had enough curiosity to find it.