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BBC MUNDO RADIO
British singer Amy Winehouse performs at the Glastonbury Festival 2008 in Somerset, south west England in this June 28, 2008 file photo.
Photograph by: Luke MacGregor/Files, Reuters
LONDON, July 23, 2011 (AFP) - Her very public battles with her demons spawned her signature tune "Rehab", but British soul singer Amy Winehouse's self-destructive lifestyle finally caught up with her.
The 27-year-old singer, who was found dead at her north London flat on Saturday, will be remembered as a wildly talented musical star whose addiction to drink and drugs proved too much.
She seemingly headlined newspapers more often than concerts, most recently in June when she was booed at an open-air concert in Serbia as she appeared to be too drunk to sing at the start of a comeback tour.
Winehouse had reportedly ended an alcohol rehabilitation program in London two weeks earlier and local media reported that alcohol had been banned for the tour.
Born on September 14, 1983 to a north London Jewish family, Winehouse grew up in a jazz-loving household — her taxi driver father Mitch is an aficionado, while uncles on her mother Janis's side were professional musicians.
Aged 12, she created a rap duo with a friend, and a year later, she received her first guitar and began singing soul music.
She cited black American female singers like Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington as influences, as well as Elvis Presley.
Winehouse attended the BRIT School in Croydon, south London, which excels in the performing arts and has produced music stars such as Katie Melua, Adele, Dane Bowers, Kate Nash, Leona Lewis and The Feeling.
In an interview for a tour DVD, Winehouse described herself as "insecure", giving a possible reason for her excessive behaviour.
She bared her soul in two albums — "Frank" in 2003 and "Back to Black" in 2006 — and impressed critics with her powerful, smoky voice and wide-ranging repetoire taking in everything from rap to Motown.
Her distinctive jet-black beehive hairstyle, thick make-up around her eyes, and the myriad tattoos on her skinny frame ensured that she stood out from the crowd for her appearance as well as her talent.
"Back to Black" was Britain's best-selling album of 2007, and was named best pop vocal album at the 2008 Grammys.
Unfortunately, her hit single "Rehab", which won three gongs by itself at the Grammys, became a symbol for her off-stage life.
She has fought alcohol, drugs, self-harm and eating disorders, all in the public eye.
Her relationship with her former husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, was further fuel for the tabloid newspapers.
They married in Miami in May 2007 but had a tempestuous relationship. He spent part of their marriage behind bars for a vicious attack on a pub landlord and a subsequent attempt to cover it up. They divorced in July 2009.
In December 2007, she was photographed wandering London's streets barefoot and in her bra in the early hours of the morning.
In early 2008 she spent another stint at a rehabilitation clinic to overcome drug addiction, having been caught on video apparently smoking crack cocaine a month earlier, which led to her bein
Police: Singer Amy Winehouse dies at age 27
Winehouse shot to fame with the album "Back to Black," whose blend of jazz, soul, rock and classic pop was a global hit. It won five Grammys and made Winehouse — with her black beehive hairdo and old-fashioned sailor tattoos — one of music's most recognizable stars.
Police confirmed that a 27-year-old female was pronounced dead at the home in Camden Square northern London; the cause of death was not immediately known. London Ambulance Services said Winehouse had died before the two ambulance crews it sent arrived at the scene.
An ambulance could be seen parked beneath the trees outside her London home, and the whole street was cordoned off by police tape. Officers kept onlookers away from the scene.
Last month, Winehouse canceled her European comeback tour after she swayed and slurred her way through barely recognizable songs in her first show in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Booed and jeered off stage, she flew home and her management said she would take time off to recover.
"I didn't go out looking to be famous," Winehouse told the Associated Press when "Back to Black" was released. "I'm just a musician."
But in the end, the music was overshadowed by fame, and by Winehouse's demons. Tabloids lapped up the erratic stage appearances, drunken fights, stints in hospital and rehab clinics. Performances became shambling, stumbling train wrecks, watched around the world on the Internet.
Born in 1983 to taxi driver Mitch Winehouse and his pharmacist wife Janis, Winehouse grew up in the north London suburbs, and was set on a showbiz career from an early age. When she was 10, she and a friend formed a rap group, Sweet 'n' Sour — Winehouse was Sour — that she later described as "the little white Jewish Salt 'n' Pepa."
She attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, a factory for British music and acting moppets, later went to the Brit School, a performing arts academy in the "Fame" mold, and was originally signed to "Pop Idol" svengali Simon Fuller's 19 Management.
But Winehouse was never a packaged teen star, and always resisted being pigeonholed.
Her jazz-influenced 2003 debut album, "Frank," was critically praised and sold well in Britain. It earned Winehouse an Ivor Novello songwriting award, two Brit nominations and a spot on the shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize.
But Winehouse soon expressed dissatisfaction with the disc, saying she was "only 80 percent behind" the album.
"Frank" was followed by a slump during which Winehouse broke up with her boyfriend, suffered a long period of writer's block and, she later said, smoked a lot of marijuana.
"I had writer's block for so long," she said in 2007. "And as a writer, your self-worth is literally based on the last thing you wrote. .. I used to think, 'What happened to me?'
"At one point it had been two years since the last record and (the record company) actually said to me, 'Do you even want to make another record?' I was like, 'I swear it's coming.' I said to them, 'Once I start writing I will write and write and write. But I just have to start it.'"
The album she eventually produced was a sensation.
Released in Britain in the fall of 2006, "Back to Black" brought Winehouse global fame. Working with producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi and soul-funk group the Dap-Kings, Winehouse fused soul, jazz, doo-wop and, above all, a love of the girl-groups of the early 1960s with lyrical tales of romantic obsession and emotional excess.
"Back to Black" was released in the United States in March 2007 and went on to win five Grammy awards, including song and record of the year for "Rehab."
Music critic John Aizlewood attributed her trans-Atlantic success to a fantastic voice and a genuinely original sound.
"A lot of British bands fail in America because they give America something Americans do better — that's why most British hip-hop has failed," he said. "But they won't have come across anything quite like Amy Winehouse."
Winehouse's rise was helped by her distinctive look — black beehive of hair, thickly lined cat eyes, girly tattoos — and her tart tongue.
She was famously blunt in her assessment of her peers, once describing Dido's sound as "background music — the background to death" and saying of pop princess Kylie Minogue, "she's not an artist ... she's a pony."
The songs on "Black to Black" detailed breakups and breakdowns with a similar frankness. Lyrically, as in life, Winehouse wore her heart on her sleeve.
"I listen to a lot of '60s music, but society is different now," Winehouse said in 2007. "I'm a young woman and I'm going to write about what I know."
Even then, Winehouse's performances were sometimes shambolic, and she admitted she is "a terrible drunk."
Increasingly, her personal life began to overshadow her career.
She acknowledged struggling with eating disorders and told a newspaper that she had been diagnosed as manic depressive but refused to take medication. Soon accounts of her erratic behavior, canceled concerts and drink- and drug-fueled nights began to multiply.
Photographs caught her unsteady on her feet or vacant-eyed, and she appeared unhealthily thin, with scabs on her face and marks on her arms.
There were embarrassing videos released to the world on the Internet. One showed an addled Winehouse and Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty playing with newborn mice. Another, for which Winehouse apologized, showed her singing a racist ditty to the tune of a children's song.
Winehouse's managers went to increasingly desperate lengths to keep the wayward star on the straight and narrow.
Though she was often reported to be working on new material, fans got tired of waiting for the much-promised followup to "Back to Black."
Occasional bits of recording saw the light of day. Her rendition of The Zutons' "Valerie" was a highlight of producer Mark Ronson's 2007 album "Version," and she recorded the pop classic "It's My Party" for the 2010 Quincy Jones album "Q: Soul Bossa Nostra."
But other recording projects with Ronson, one of the architects of the success of "Back to Black," came to nothing.
She also had run-ins with the law. In April 2008, Winehouse was cautioned by police for assault after she slapped a man during a raucous night out.
The same year she was investigated by police, although not charged, after a tabloid newspaper published a video that appeared to show her smoking crack cocaine.
In 2010, Winehouse pleaded guilty to assaulting a theater manager who asked her to leave a family Christmas show because she'd had too much to drink. She was given a fine and a warning to stay out of trouble by a judge who praised her for trying to clean up her act.
In May 2007 in Miami, she married music industry hanger-on Blake Fielder-Civil, but the honeymoon was brief. That November, Fielder-Civil was arrested for an attack on a pub manager the year before. Fielder-Civil later pleaded guilty to assaulting barman James King and then offering him 200,000 pounds (US$400,000) to keep quiet about it.
Winehouse stood by "my Blake" throughout his trial, often blowing kisses at him from the court's public gallery and wearing a heart-shaped pin labeled "Blake" in her hair at concerts. But British newspapers reported extramarital affairs while Fielder-Civil was behind bars.
They divorced in 2009.
Winehouse's health often appeared fragile. In June 2008 and again in April 2010, she was taken to hospital and treated for injuries after fainting and falling at home.
Her father said she had developed the lung disease emphysema from smoking cigarettes and crack, although her spokeswoman later said Winehouse only had "early signs of what could lead to emphysema."
She left the hospital to perform at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert in Hyde Park in June 2008, and at the Glastonbury festival the next day, where she received a rousing reception but scuffled with a member of the crowd. Then it was back to a London clinic for treatment, continuing the cycle of music, excess and recuperation that marked her career.
The troubled star’s body was found in her Camden home…
Amy Winehouse has been found dead at her home in north London.
No suspicious circumstances surround the death; a drink and drugs overdose is suspected.
A statement from the Met Police confirmed they had received a call at 4.05pm on Saturday about the possible death of a woman at a flat in Camden Square, north London. They attended and found the body of a 27-year-old female. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are treating the death as unexplained.
The Back To Black star has long battled addictions with drink and drugs and most recently made the news after a shambolic performance in Belgrade.
Earlier today, before the tragedy took place, her management team released a statement conforming she was pulling out of all gigs to concentrate on her recovery: “Amy Winehouse is withdrawing from all scheduled performances. Everyone involved wishes to do everything they can to help her return to her best and she will be given as long as it takes for this to happen.”
Our best wishes go out to Amy’s family and friends.
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Amy Winehouse: 1983-2011
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