Singer Amy Winehouse dead: media reports

RIP: Amy Winehouse (1983 - 2011)

It's hard to over estimate just what a talent Amy Winehouse was.

Posted 23rd July 2011 in | By Connor Owen

It's hard to over estimate just what a talent Amy Winehouse was. Though she may not leave us with a vast back catalogue - and to many her impressive first album 'Frank' remains a lost classic - in one record she changed the popular music landscape.

While many will choose to concentrate on the bad - the sad drug and alcohol addiction and often erratic performances that came with it - together with producer Mark Ronson, 'Back To Black' was a blueprint every A&R was told to recreate. The bestselling record of 2007, an album which reached number two in the US, winning five Grammys and two Ivor Novellos; Winehouse was as brilliant as she was successful. A truly amazing voice, there was little contrived about her rise to the top.

Born to a Jewish family in North Finchley, Winehouse grew up with the jazz albums of her father Mitch. Though expelled from the Sylvia Young theatre school, she found herself taken on by Simon Fuller's 19 Entertainment and Universal. With 'Frank' released just after her 20th birthday, it wasn't a runaway success. Peaking at Number 13, the record was still critically acclaimed. Still - nobody could expect what came next.

Meeting her future husband Blake Fielder-Civil, it was the break up of their early relationship (they would later go on to marry) that caused Winehouse to write the songs that became 'Back To Black'. The woman that returned upon the albums release was radically different - almost unrecognisably thin, and with her darker side evident, she brought an authenticity to her music which, while often uncomfortable, proved an instant success.

'Rehab', the first release from the record, became her first Top 10 single - remaining in the chart for over a year. The fact that the public believed what she sang seemed to make the music more powerful, as her relationship with Fielder-Civil and the problems that came with it played out in public. The more she made the front pages, the greater the acclaim that followed.

During her later years Winehouse found herself with more of the former than the latter, yet despite a shaky attempt at a comeback in Belgrade last month, it's that voice and that beehive that will live on.

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