Amy Winehouse

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  ‘I think all the stuff I was listening to, like a lot of doo-wop, a lot of sixties soul, Motown, girl groups, I tend to be influenced by whatever I’m listening to, so I think, I guess it’s all stuff from the jukebox from when I used to go and play pool in the pub. It’s jukebox music.’

  It was here that Amy developed her own cocktail. She calls it the Rickstasy, and the drink consists of three parts vodka, one part Southern Comfort, one part banana liqueur, and one part Bailey’s. ‘By the time you’ve had two of them you’re like, “Don’t even try and go anywhere. Sit down and stay down, until the birds start singing.”’

  She should get one of the big breweries to release an Amy Winehouse-endorsed Rickstasy. It would sell like hot cakes.

  After the disappointment she felt over so many aspects of the album Frank, Amy decided to enforce changes for her new venture. ‘I didn’t want to play the jazz thing up too much again,’ she says. ‘I was bored of complicated chord structures and needed something more direct. I’d been listening to a lot of girl groups from the fifties and sixties. I liked the simplicity of that stuff. It just gets to the point. So I started thinking about writing songs in that way.’

  The differences told in many ways and Amy felt they gave her a more mature edge. ‘All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends or family. When I did the last album, Frank, I was a very defensive, insecure person, so when I sang about men it was all like, “Fuck you. Who do you think you are?” The new album is more, “I will fight for you; I would do anything for you”, or “It’s such a shame we couldn’t make it work.” I feel like I’m not so teenage about relationships.’

  It was to be an album made of songs that she would be proud of and would therefore speak more fondly of than she did Frank. ‘I try to think about things before I say them nowadays,’ she confessed. ‘I’m a lot less defensive with this record. I’m just so proud of it. I think the record speaks louder than any of my stupid actions or things that I say.’

  Whereas Frank earned full respect and recognition only some time after its release, Back to Black was to be an immediate hit in every sense of the word. Often dark, occasionally despairing but always beautiful and assured, it was an absolute triumph and firmly put Amy on the map of not just those who follow the music business keenly, but everyday folk, too, who simply appreciate a fine tune and a cracking vocal delivery.

  It opened with the famous track, ‘Rehab’. Blending traditional soul with a modern twist, ‘Rehab’ is a joyful, brazen romp of a song that Aretha Franklin would have been proud of. With Mark Ronson at the production controls, the Motown-style horn section builds the drama over the backdrop of bells, handclaps, Wurlitzer organ and piano. It’s defiant, brash and unforgivably catchy. Lyrically, it is of course famously about her management team’s attempts to make her go into rehabilitation to address her drinking. As for Amy, she’d rather stay at home with her Ray Charles albums. She’s convinced she’ll be fine, in part because her dad has told her so. ‘Rehab’ is Amy’s most widely recognised song. It has been covered by Girls Aloud, Paolo Nutini, Justin Timberlake and Taking Back Sunday.

  Of the song, Amy says, ‘I guess when you’re quite young and angry at the world, I didn’t want to write any songs about love, ever. Then I fell in love and I was like, “Oh, shit!” You know. I used to listen to a lot of stuff like Beastie Boys. I wanted to write loads of tongue-in-cheek songs like that so it was really easy to do something like “Rehab”.

  The song was written about the time her management tried to get her to check in to the Priory Clinic in Southgate, North London. ‘I went in and the guy behind the desk says, “What we do is we’re filling out forms.” I said, “Oi, listen, don’t waste your time.” Then he goes, “Why do you think you’re here?” and I said, “I don’t think I’m an alcoholic, but I’m, you know, depressed. I think it’s symptomatic of depression.” And he said to me, “Well, I am an alcoholic, I’ve been here.” People who have that kind of rehab mentality, all they wanna do is tell you their story, so you feel better about telling them yours, but you just end up [saying], “Oi, I ain’t that bad.”’

  Next up, the album slows into the sparse, groovy ‘You Know I’m No Good’. Blending jazz and R&B, the song is supported by a catchy saxophone line. The lyric concerns Amy’s confession of infidelity. However, far from being furious with her for her cheating, when her lover catches her out, he merely shrugs it off. In common with several tracks on her albums, the traditional tune is contrasted by a distinctly modern-day lyric with its mentions of skull T-shirts, chips and pitta. ‘You Know…’ was used to promote the television show Mad Men and as the opening to ITV’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Arctic Monkeys covered it on Jo Wiley’s Live Lounge on Radio 1.

  While ‘You Know…’ is a little moody and dirty, the doo-wop fun of ‘Me and Mr Jones’ soon lightens the mood with its sauntering, 1940s feel. Amy bellows out the lyric in a style reminiscent of Dinah Washington. But what are those words about? The Mr Jones of the title is believed to be rapper and Salaam Remi act Nas Jones. The link would seem to be the mention of Destiny, the name of Jones’s child with ex-girlfriend Carmen, and of the number 14, because 14 September is the birthday that Winehouse and Nas share. Amy berates him for making her miss a Slick Rick gig. However, she remains in awe of him, her second favourite black Jew after ‘Sammy’ (presumably Sammy Davis Jr). She might let him make it up to her, she says, and suggests they try again on Saturday.

  ‘A rapper like Nas can tell a story about being in a room, and you feel like you’re standing in the corner of that room,’ she has explained. ‘You know the way it smells, and if someone’s smoking.’ Her music has the same quality and nowhere is this more true than on ‘Me And Mr Jones’.

  ‘Just Friends’ maintains the lighter mood. With its gorgeous jazz inflections and Amy’s Aretha Franklin-style delivery, it bounces along joyfully. Amy wonders whether she and the man in question can ever be just friends. Although she doesn’t resolve the question during the song, and although she is singing of hurt and pain, the music remains upbeat, as does the atmosphere. Which is just as well, as the next song, the titular ‘Back to Black’, is as dark as they come. Perhaps her most sombre tune, ‘Back to Black’ is the ultimate heartbreak song and Amy’s pain oozes from it like blood. To a doomladen backdrop of reverb guitar, strings and bells, Amy sings of the heartache and despair she feels at the infidelity of her lover. The lyric is almost suicidal, speaking of dying a hundred times and the ultimate low: going back to black.

  ‘There’s never a dull moment with Amy… and that includes her album’s title track, a gorgeously opulent-but-bitter tale of a tangled love affair gone wrong,’ cheered the Sunday Mirror, when ‘Back to Black’ was released as a single. ‘It’s impossibly smooth and ridiculously good. She is simply on fire on this track,’ purred the Scottish Daily Record. Music Week added that the single is ‘a choice cut so soulful you can almost smell the bar-room smoke while listening to it’. The Financial Times is a fan of this song, too, one reviewer saying it sounds ‘like the sort of brilliantly florid lament that Ennio Morricone used to write for spaghetti westerns’.

  Musically, the song has been compared to both ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Jimmy Mack’ by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. The descending melody matches the descending mood of Amy as she deals with her heartbreak and pain. Manchester’s Evening News described ‘Back to Black’ on its release as ‘one of the best singles of the year’. It’s hard to argue. It has been covered by the Rumble Strips and was also sung on The X Factor by the hopeful girl band Hope.

  If you want a heartbreak song but one that soothes the soul rather than plunges it into deeper agony, then ‘Love is a Losing Game’ is for you. Again, any sense of redemption is absent from the lyric but it does at least have a calm and resigned feel to it. Musically, a ballad with wonderful strings and a guitar line that has been compared to both the Isley Brothers and Curtis Mayfield, it is like a musical comfort bal
lad, wrapped round a lovesick soul. Many have commented that ‘Love Is…’ sounds more like the Amy of the Frank era, rather than the Amy of the Back to Black days. It has been covered live onstage by Prince. Note, too, the reference to the final frame, no doubt influenced by the many games of pool Amy was playing as she wrote the album. The song was released as a single in December 2007.

  Perhaps Amy’s most vocally rich song, ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’ is one of the best-known tracks on the album. It attempts the classic Northern Soul technique of combining a sad theme with a happy, upbeat tune and pulls it off marvellously. Sampling the Motown classic ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’, written by Ashford & Simpson and recorded by Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross, it is instantly catchy and danceable. Here, Amy is once more heartbroken but she has grown up and toughened up. Therefore, though she cries over the loss, her tears can dry on their own this time.

  Ushered in by some choppy chords on a reverb-laden guitar, the dreamy air of ‘Wake Up Alone’ reflects its lyric, in which Amy describes the aftermath of a break-up. She is staying strong during the day and brings herself up when she finds herself crying. Keeping herself busy, she can stay on top of her emotions while awake. However, it is in her sleep that she has sweat-soaked dreams about him and is, of course, then hurt when she wakes up alone. When she dedicated this song to her imprisoned husband Blake during her winter tour she reduced many audience members to tears, this author included.

  A ‘Stand By Your Man’ for the twenty-first century, ‘Some Unholy War’ is rarely commented on, which is a shame, because, despite a comparatively uninspiring musical performance, the lyric is inspired and decidedly Amy-esque. She’ll stand beside her man whatever fight he is fighting, with her drunken pride and battered guitar case. Her Billie Holiday-style vocals complement the organ and tambourine background neatly. At two minutes and twenty-two seconds, it is the album’s shortest tune.

  Fans of the Four Tops will have been delighted by ‘He Can Only Hold Her’. With nods to James Brown and modern hip hop in its beat, it is a happy tune, certainly when compared with much of the rest of the album. The guitar flows effortlessly and Amy croons over it about the complexities of a particularly tricky relationship. A classic Motown tune, it again deserves a better reputation than it has.

  ‘Addicted’ is a wonderfully happy, carefree conclusion to an often dark album. A happy, summery song, it features Amy mischievously singing about a friend’s boyfriend who keeps smoking all her weed. Here Amy is sassy, defiant and witty, and the listener can hear the smile on her face as she warns her friend that she won’t let her boyfriend back into the house unless he has his own supplies, and that she will be stricter than an airport security team. In the final twist of the album, Amy reveals that weed has done more for her than any dick ever has. Perhaps her happiest ever song, Amy often uses ‘Addicted’ to kick off her live sets, those familiar opening bass lines setting up many an evening of music and joy.

  The response to Back to Black was, almost universally, not just positive but absolutely joyously admiring. Indeed, the album surely rates as one of the most consensus-forming releases of recent times. Where the reviews of Frank had been largely complimentary, the response to Back to Black was almost orgasmic. Helen Brown, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said,

  Her voice slithers from the soapy-sinuous sound of a woman who can wrap two lovers round her ‘likkle’ finger, to the heartbroken throaty graze of one left crying on a kitchen floor. Living with raw conviction through the emotional experience of each song on Back to Black, Winehouse proves herself a true urban diva.

  The Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey called it ‘a 21st-century soul classic’.

  Describing Amy as ‘a heavily tattooed, 23-year-old north Londoner with fluctuating weight, a penchant for drink and a vivid sexuality, and a voice that clearly owes a debt to the childhood she spent listening to her daddy’s jazz records’, the New Statesman magazine concluded, ‘Back to Black reveals a darkness that would surely make Winehouse’s daddy proud.’

  Staying in the liberal press arena, the Observer made the track ‘Back to Black’ its single of the week and, even though reviewer Kitty Empire concluded that the second half of the album is weaker than the first, this matters not, because ‘Winehouse could release albums of knuckles cracking from here on in: her reputation is already assured.’

  On the BBC website, Matt Harvey covered similar territory: ‘The second half of the album isn’t quite as good as the first, but that’s a minor gripe. One of the best UK albums of the year, with the added advantage that you’ll be able to pick it up at the local supermarket checkout…’

  Rolling Stone magazine praised Ronson and Remi’s assured production, noting that it turns ‘classic soul sounds into something big, bright and punchy. The tunes don’t always hold up. But the best ones are impossible to dislike.’ In the Evening Standard, Chris Elwell-Sutton was also praising of the production, gushing, ‘To inject so much of her own mixed-up character into such hallowed musical formats was an extraordinary challenge. Luckily, Winehouse has the production, voice and strength of character to pull it off.’

  John Lewis, in Time Out, said,

  It’s brilliantly executed by producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, recalling the look-you’re-in-the-studio retro soul pastiches of labels like Desco and Daptone. But, crucially, Amy’s lyrics (like the lead single ‘Rehab’, with its splendid assault on therapy culture) retain the contemporary man-baiting obscenities of Frank.

  In Attitude, Jamie Hakim wrote,

  An unexpected departure from the jazz stylings of first album Frank, Amy comes across like Dinah Washington crossed with 60s girl group the Ronettes. There are also Motown references but overall the sound is darker, the sort of music that delinquents with switchblade scars would drag their backcombed girlfriends across the dancefloor to.

  The Sunday Herald had this to say: ‘Where the original swayed, this one jitters, like a tetchy, frustrated Motown stomper, its urgent drums the perfect backing to the pleading, brash tones of Winehouse, with whom Ronson can seem to do no wrong.’

  The Times said, ‘This one is tight, packed full of real old-fashioned songs in the manner of soul greats such as Dinah Washington’; and the Independent declared, ‘For her follow-up to Frank, Winehouse has shifted her emphasis from jazz to soulful R&B. It’s a measure of her talents that the shift should be so effective.’

  Hadley Freeman of the Guardian said,

  When I interviewed Winehouse in the summer of 2003 she was mouthy, unapologetic and undeniably curvy; by 2005 every tendon in her legs was on show when she was photographed looking lonely and miserable on a night out in London.

  So, had Amy reinvented herself deliberately? Music critic Garry Mulholland rejects the notion that the Back to Black-era Amy is a wholesale reinvention of the Frank-era Amy. ‘I accept that she’s lost weight,’ he says. ‘But I don’t see it personally as she sat down one day and thought, “I’m going to be thinner and do faux Motown.” I see the second album as a continuation and development of the first album. I see her current look as a continuation and development of the look she had a few years ago. She’s a proper artist in the way that Bowie and Madonna are. I think every album she makes will have a different sound, and a different look to accompany it. That’s what you do, if you’re halfway decent. It’s just that nowadays we’re so unused to halfway decent that people think of it as an extraordinary thing.’

  Amy has been compared to many artists, and Jennifer Nine managed an original and novel comparison in her review of the album on Yahoo Music. She said the album’s

  fearless knack, along with the ability to get into the very soul of much-aped but rarely matched pop genres, hasn’t been done this well since Elvis Costello was in his savage prime. And frankly, when you factor in the knock-’em-dead voice and the killer eyeliner, Elvis is nowhere f*cking close.

  On the webzine PopMatters, the reviewer said, ‘Back to Black finds a fearless artist saying
whatever she damn well pleases. And we best listen up.’ Even the posh old Financial Times chimed in, asking in a quiz, ‘Which colour does Amy Winehouse return to, according to her current bestselling CD?’

  Amy has discussed the inspiration behind the album’s songs. ‘So, “Rehab” is the first single from the album. It’s all about my revolving door rehab experience. I said no! “You Know I’m No Good” is about how I couldn’t be faithful, and the title comes from my defensiveness when I got found out. Which leads us to “Back to Black”, the title track. I split up with my boyfriend and had a few black months. Say no more!

  “Me & Mr Jones”? Well… I didn’t mind when my ex didn’t get me into the Slick Rick show, but Nas? Nobody stands in between me and my man! “Tears Dry on Their Own” comes from when I was in a relationship that I knew was doomed, but that I wouldn’t be too devastated when it ended… Sometimes you just need to find time in the day to have fun, not sex. That’s what “Just Friends” is about.

  ‘But you know when you’re in a failing relationship and you’re trying to make it work? Well that’s “Love is a Losing Game” – how hopeless and desolate you can feel. Finally, there’s “Addicted”. Now, my best friend can smoke however much of mine she likes, but her boyfriend? That shit don’t fly!’

  Paolo Hewitt is a renowned music writer and is the author of respected works on everyone from Steve Marriott of the Small Faces to Oasis and Paul Weller. In an interview with the author, he expanded on why Amy had such a success with Back to Black. ‘She does what all the greats do,’ he said. ‘She takes from various sources and then makes it her own. People are very lazy when it comes to black music. They would never ever call the Smiths a prog-rock band but they feel like they can write about “the Amy Winehouse-influenced Motown album”. There’s so much more than just Motown going on there. For me, when I heard “Rehab”, I just heard fifties and sixties New Orleans music. There’s so much there: jazz, R&B and more.