Having a bad temper and a short fuse, hit boyfriends and fans, is all just fine to turn up in the tabloids and those many celebrities web sites and magazines. Still, with Amy Winehouse, even if does help to put her name on the spot, the displeasure and the aggressiveness blends on her music, mighty soulful voice and lyrics. She’s the bad girl, the dame – from the old film noir, not the hip-hop male lady friend. The one that wants the entire catch and the spoils for herself and, one way or another (her way, most surely) gets it. Drinking problems, eating disorders, depression, insanity are just some more strong colours in Amy’s wardrobe, helping to forge a legend and placing her up there, along those mythical, tragic, bigger than life female jazz singers like Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin or Josephine Baker. If Winehouse will go down music history as a rebel and a maverick it remains to be seen. “Back To Black”, her second album is certainly worthy as many praise as it is been getting. An astonishing voice, half soaked in disdain half scarred with sorrowfulness rises upon a blanket of cool, elegant music, piercing our hearts, making us shiver and painfully look inside. Albeit her countless problems it is always refreshing, in a kind of perverse way, in these over cleansed, übber sanitised, everybody follows the book and is hyper healthy and fit times to see someone, even if for the sake of fame and glory, to go exactly the opposite way, and crash in great (rock’n’roll&jazz) fashion. Tuesday, 20 March 2007
AMY WINEHOUSE - Back To Black (Island)
Having a bad temper and a short fuse, hit boyfriends and fans, is all just fine to turn up in the tabloids and those many celebrities web sites and magazines. Still, with Amy Winehouse, even if does help to put her name on the spot, the displeasure and the aggressiveness blends on her music, mighty soulful voice and lyrics. She’s the bad girl, the dame – from the old film noir, not the hip-hop male lady friend. The one that wants the entire catch and the spoils for herself and, one way or another (her way, most surely) gets it. Drinking problems, eating disorders, depression, insanity are just some more strong colours in Amy’s wardrobe, helping to forge a legend and placing her up there, along those mythical, tragic, bigger than life female jazz singers like Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin or Josephine Baker. If Winehouse will go down music history as a rebel and a maverick it remains to be seen. “Back To Black”, her second album is certainly worthy as many praise as it is been getting. An astonishing voice, half soaked in disdain half scarred with sorrowfulness rises upon a blanket of cool, elegant music, piercing our hearts, making us shiver and painfully look inside. Albeit her countless problems it is always refreshing, in a kind of perverse way, in these over cleansed, übber sanitised, everybody follows the book and is hyper healthy and fit times to see someone, even if for the sake of fame and glory, to go exactly the opposite way, and crash in great (rock’n’roll&jazz) fashion. 
