Just about everything involved with Amy Winehouse is borderline life and death.
Audiences get to see her out on the high wire come Monday in Germany.
Winehouse is Big Mojo magic.
Lurid history, mental problems, damaged-imperfect body... self-damaged. Junkie. Couple years mostly drunk. Skin graffiti.
Violent episodes.
"Bi-polar" from the get-go.
On the worst days an unliveable mess.
Be grateful - truly - that you do not walk in these shoes.
Here's what a tolerant society gets in return for its vigilance.
This is not conscious, practiced singing as from Sinatra, Streisand, or a Pavarotti or Diana Damrau.
Conscious intent evaporates. A thin Phil Spector "hit" turns to obsession.
We've heard other great, great blues singers. No question.
English freedoms are exactly what let this gal happen.
Guarantee you, an intolerant society would burn her, jail her, or beat the gift right out of her.
A free society helps someone like this survive.
The YouTube above is a forgotten flip-side cut. Slim tune. Calculated songwriting for a pre-teen commercial audience from Phil Specter.
Not much song.
Somewhere about 1:30 in, Winehouse loses it.
Great blues work as usually depended on either pain, as with Edith Piaf, or on marginal sanity.
Where the artist confuses dreams and songs with reality, the result can go off the charts.
This is done in front of a huge audience. Straight blues number written by Winehouse with some help.
If you've seen anything at this level, please let me know.
I've been a blues nut since I was a kid down South. Jammed. Done arrangements when the synths came out.
Here's another one, getting lost in the material.
It's hard to see how an America that sees itself as an EMPIRE and cuts off health care for children is gonna keep an Amy Winehouse alive.
BTW: this gal is no bet to make it to 40.
What she has done -- at 24 -- is to change the expectation for what a singer can accomplish, putting a human soul over into sound.
As Pink writes: "I'm not here to entertain you." Winehouse does entertain, more or less, but apart from "Eff Me Pumps" that is incidental.