I'm mired in a peculiar state of mind this week. The cause of it is clear to me, and I don't feel right about the whole situation.
I feel very sad about the death of Amy Winehouse. I feel sadder about her death, on a personal level, than I do about the Norwegian man who killed 85 people at a youth camp. He flat-out killed 85 people in one fell swoop. That's disturbing in a way that I struggle to comprehend. It's disgusting. It's inhuman. It's beyond horrible. Of course, a lot of those people do things for the attention, so I'm not going to give him the time of day because I can't wrap my mind around it.
What I can wrap my mind around is someone whose music managed to make me feel something.
I've been reading some articles about Amy Winehouse's death; some have been tales of her incredible/unique talent, some have been very personal accounts from friends, and some have been simple newsy articles reporting the facts and mentioning her losing battle with numerous addictions.
Some time in winter-spring 2007 I heard "Rehab." I don't remember where I was when I heard it but I remember distinctly thinking that it couldn't possibly have been a new song. No new artist could create that soul/jazz/funk/heart/pop combination. Most people have been comparing her to others, but if you can name someone who previously created that combination of sounds, I'll be dumbfounded. At the same time, it couldn't have been an old song - it didn't have that tinny, less-expensive-and-thus-older sounding production quality.
She was new, but she was incredibly old.
I was intrigued, to say the least, and almost immediately copped the album, "Back to Black." It was an award-wining album and rightly so. Granted it only ran 34 minutes total, but my god, listen to the 34 minutes. There are a few songs that I can take or leave as I think she tried to do too much, but the good songs are timeless in a literal way. It doesn't speak to any single era in music. It's incredible.
In the following weeks I started reading a little bit about her to find out what her deal was. As it turned out she was a major addict and that "Rehab" was a true-story about her previous record label. Upon hearing of a previous record label, that led me to download her previous album, "Frank."
After that, she essentially controlled my ipod for a couple months. But even with all of that, I don't even think that her music was what hit me the most with Amy Winehouse. It was brilliant music, sure, but there was more to her.
I think my favorite thing about Amy Winehouse was that I felt two distinctly different things when I saw her; one was that I hope she finds whoever or whatever she needs to find and can cure herself - a hope which obviously was in vain. The other was that, as strange as she looked, I was always very attracted to her.
Maybe it was her voice; a voice which was absurdly perfect for her music, yet comically British when talking. She may have had the worst stereotypical British accent I've ever heard...but when she sung...wow. Anyway, maybe it was how she carried herself. Maybe it was how she truly didn't care about what was going on outside of her bubble of music and Blake. Maybe it was how she tilted her face downward and glared up toward the camera while singing and gave a smirk/grin that just screamed "I know I got it."
I know she was broken down physically from all the drug usage, and I'm not into the tattoos that later covered most of her upper body, but watch this video (it's called Fuck Me Pumps, so it's a little NSFW, but I don't think she actually says it in the song) to see what she started off as. It's not my favorite song of hers, but look at her. When "Back to Black" got big, she was on the map with higher-quality music videos. She was doing live performances at the Grammys (which, if you find the video of her performing and then winning the Grammy while onstage, it's chill-worthy to see the look on her face) and had burst into the mainstream. Which was surely great for her, except that it clearly gave her the money to further fuel her addictions.
The public eye, always the fan of the train wreck but can never appreciate the beauty of the train itself, just compounded every problem that she had. The well-documented downward spiral of her relationship with Blake, the downward spiral into over-the-top drug addiction, the downward spiral of not making a follow-up album to "Back to Black." All of these were just further-pressed by the tabloid coverage. I have no illusions that the media would stop what they were doing and reach out a hand to help, but that probably would have been nice.
She probably wouldn't have listened anyway, but it's something to think about. I can feel us desensitizing. People were far from shocked upon hearing of her death, which is sad without even thinking about how and incredibly talented musician just died. It's just....sad.
And it brings me back to that video. She was 19 years old. No make-up, no production value, just her and a couple of mediocre cameras. Raw, beautiful, and talented.
Three words that I wish could still describe her.
I feel very sad about the death of Amy Winehouse. I feel sadder about her death, on a personal level, than I do about the Norwegian man who killed 85 people at a youth camp. He flat-out killed 85 people in one fell swoop. That's disturbing in a way that I struggle to comprehend. It's disgusting. It's inhuman. It's beyond horrible. Of course, a lot of those people do things for the attention, so I'm not going to give him the time of day because I can't wrap my mind around it.
What I can wrap my mind around is someone whose music managed to make me feel something.
I've been reading some articles about Amy Winehouse's death; some have been tales of her incredible/unique talent, some have been very personal accounts from friends, and some have been simple newsy articles reporting the facts and mentioning her losing battle with numerous addictions.
Some time in winter-spring 2007 I heard "Rehab." I don't remember where I was when I heard it but I remember distinctly thinking that it couldn't possibly have been a new song. No new artist could create that soul/jazz/funk/heart/pop combination. Most people have been comparing her to others, but if you can name someone who previously created that combination of sounds, I'll be dumbfounded. At the same time, it couldn't have been an old song - it didn't have that tinny, less-expensive-and-thus-older sounding production quality.
She was new, but she was incredibly old.
I was intrigued, to say the least, and almost immediately copped the album, "Back to Black." It was an award-wining album and rightly so. Granted it only ran 34 minutes total, but my god, listen to the 34 minutes. There are a few songs that I can take or leave as I think she tried to do too much, but the good songs are timeless in a literal way. It doesn't speak to any single era in music. It's incredible.
In the following weeks I started reading a little bit about her to find out what her deal was. As it turned out she was a major addict and that "Rehab" was a true-story about her previous record label. Upon hearing of a previous record label, that led me to download her previous album, "Frank."
After that, she essentially controlled my ipod for a couple months. But even with all of that, I don't even think that her music was what hit me the most with Amy Winehouse. It was brilliant music, sure, but there was more to her.
I think my favorite thing about Amy Winehouse was that I felt two distinctly different things when I saw her; one was that I hope she finds whoever or whatever she needs to find and can cure herself - a hope which obviously was in vain. The other was that, as strange as she looked, I was always very attracted to her.
Maybe it was her voice; a voice which was absurdly perfect for her music, yet comically British when talking. She may have had the worst stereotypical British accent I've ever heard...but when she sung...wow. Anyway, maybe it was how she carried herself. Maybe it was how she truly didn't care about what was going on outside of her bubble of music and Blake. Maybe it was how she tilted her face downward and glared up toward the camera while singing and gave a smirk/grin that just screamed "I know I got it."
I know she was broken down physically from all the drug usage, and I'm not into the tattoos that later covered most of her upper body, but watch this video (it's called Fuck Me Pumps, so it's a little NSFW, but I don't think she actually says it in the song) to see what she started off as. It's not my favorite song of hers, but look at her. When "Back to Black" got big, she was on the map with higher-quality music videos. She was doing live performances at the Grammys (which, if you find the video of her performing and then winning the Grammy while onstage, it's chill-worthy to see the look on her face) and had burst into the mainstream. Which was surely great for her, except that it clearly gave her the money to further fuel her addictions.
The public eye, always the fan of the train wreck but can never appreciate the beauty of the train itself, just compounded every problem that she had. The well-documented downward spiral of her relationship with Blake, the downward spiral into over-the-top drug addiction, the downward spiral of not making a follow-up album to "Back to Black." All of these were just further-pressed by the tabloid coverage. I have no illusions that the media would stop what they were doing and reach out a hand to help, but that probably would have been nice.
She probably wouldn't have listened anyway, but it's something to think about. I can feel us desensitizing. People were far from shocked upon hearing of her death, which is sad without even thinking about how and incredibly talented musician just died. It's just....sad.
And it brings me back to that video. She was 19 years old. No make-up, no production value, just her and a couple of mediocre cameras. Raw, beautiful, and talented.
Three words that I wish could still describe her.
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