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"Morreu a cantora Amy Winehouse"

Posted: 23 de jul. de 2011 | Publicada por por AMC | Etiquetas: , ,


Vejo na RTP:
A cantora britânica Amy Winehouse foi hoje encontrada morta na sua casa no norte de Londres. A polícia confirma que encontrou o corpo de uma mulher de 27 anos num andar de Camden Square no norte de capital, depois de terem sido pedidos os serviços de uma ambulância por volta das 15.00H (a mesma hora em Lisboa). As autoridades declararam o óbito no local e dizem que estão a considerar a morte da cantora como inexplicada.

A cantora era conhecida pelos problemas com drogas e álcool e tinha, recentemente, saído de um tratamento.
Na sexta-feira, a revista New Musical Express deu conta que Amy Winehouse tinha sido vista no festival iTunes, em Londres, a primeira aparição pública desde que cancelou, em junho, toda a digressão europeia.
Amy Winehouse atuou apenas uma vez em Portugal, em 2008, no Rock in Rio Lisboa, num concerto atribulado, no qual aparentava estar alcoolizada.
Na altura, perante milhares de pessoas, a cantora chegou atrasada e atuou menos de uma hora e algumas das músicas foram interpretadas de forma atabalhoada.
Depois de ter saído recentemente, de uma cura de desintoxicação, Amy Winehouse tinha agendado para este verão uma nova digressão que devia assinalar o seu regresso aos palcos.
A tournée incluía uma passagem pelo festival Sudoeste, em agosto, na Zambujeira do Mar, além de atuações em Bilbao na Espanha, Locarno e Nyon na Suiça, no festival de Lucca em Itália em Wiesen na Austria e na Polónia.
No entanto as coisas correram mal. No passado mês de junho, a cantora foi vaiada num concerto na Sérvia, onde durante noventa minutos apareceu em cena cambaleante e incapaz de se lembrar da totalidade das letras das suas canções, tendo acabado por se retirar, deixando à sua banda a tarefa de concluir o espetáculo.
A digressão estival foi cancelada e a família admitiu que Amy Winehouse demoraria longos anos até voltar aos palcos.
A cantora britânica deixa apenas dois álbuns editados - "Frank" (2003) e Back to Black" (2006), que lhe valeu vários prémios Grammy.

[ACTUALIZADA]

Cf. também o especial em O Expresso 
No Twitter: #AmyWinehouse | #amywinehouse |

 (...)

Amy vem juntar-se ao mito do 'Clube dos 27'


Vinte e sete anos. Muitos dos grandes mitos musicais do século passado morreram com esta idade. Amy Winehouse, uma cantora cujo enorme talento acompanhava uma vida de excessos, é mais um membro deste "Clube 27".  Eis alguns dos músicos que, tal como Amy, morreram aos 27 anos, no auge do talento musical:

  • Brian Jones: Foi expulso dos Rolling Stones por Mick Jagger e Keith Richards. Era viciado em drogas e tinha problemas com a justiça. O guitarrista britânico foi descoberto morto na piscina na madrugada de 2 para 3 de Julho de 1969. As investigações à sua morte concluíram ter-se tratado de uma morte acidental, sob a influência das drogas e do álcool.
  • Jimi Hendrix: O guitarrista afro-americano terá morrido sufocado no próprio vómito depois de ter ingerido um cocktail fatal de soporíferos e vinho tinto no dia 18 de Setembro de 1970 num hotel londrino, embora as circunstâncias da sua morte nunca tivessem sido completamente explicadas. Foi o ponto final de uma carreira efémera mas que deixou uma marca histórica na música universal.
  • Janis Joplin: Quando gravava o álbum “Pearl” - o seu sobrenome - a cantora americana foi encontrada morta num quarto de hotel no dia 4 de Outubro de 1970. Causa de morte: uma overdose de heroína. Esta cantora americana, uma fervorosa activista contra o racismo e contra o conservadorismo, morreu escassos 15 dias depois de Hendrix.
  • Jim Morrison: O vocalista dos The Doors morreu no dia 3 de Julho de 1971 em Paris, onde estava exilado depois de ter sido condenado nos EUA por “exibicionismo”. De acordo com a polícia, Jim Morrison morreu em consequência de uma crise cardíaca. Outras fontes alegam, porém, que a causa da morte se deve a uma “overdose”. A sua campa continua a ser uma das mais visitadas do cemitério parisiense de Père-Lachaise.
  • Kurt Cobain: o guitarrista e vocalista dos Nirvana suicidou-se com um tiro no dia 5 de Abril de 1994 na sua casa de Seattle. Cobain foi um dos músicos que ajudou a apresentar ao mundo o estilo grunge, personificando o mal de vivre adolescente que marcou a década de 1990. Casado com a cantora Courtney Love, Cobain - que também sofria de problemas de dependência das drogas - nunca reagiu bem à fama mundial desencadeada com o álbum “Nevermind”.



Sobre o Clube dos 27:
No Twitter:  #27club 


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Amy Winehouse found dead, aged 27

A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed that a 27-year-old woman had died in Camden and that the cause of death was as yet unexplained.
The Brit and Grammy award-winner had struggled with drink and drug addiction and had recently spent time in rehab.
Her record label Universal called her "a gifted musician, artist and performer", adding: "Our prayers go out to Amy's family, friends and fans."
She pulled out of a comeback tour last month after a disastrous appearance at her first gig.

Jeered at gig Winehouse cancelled the European tour after being jeered at the show in Serbia, when she appeared too drunk to perform.
For 90 minutes, she mumbled through parts of songs and at times left the stage - leaving her band to fill in.
She had recently finished a course of alcohol rehabilitation in London and at the time was under strict instructions not to drink.
A section of the road where the singer lived was cordoned off on Saturday evening, as journalists, local residents and fans gathered at the police tapes.
Forensic officers were seen going in and out of the building.
In a statement - police spokesman Superintendent Raj Kohli said Winehouse's death was being treated as "unexplained."
It had been reported that Winehouse died of a drugs overdose but Superintendent Kohli said "it would be inappropriate to speculate on the cause of death."
He added: "My sympathy extends not just to her immediate family but clearly to the thousands and millions of fans across the world."
Winehouse won widespread acclaim with her 2003 debut album, Frank - which was nominated for the Mercury prize.
But it was 2006's Back to Black which brought her worldwide stardom, winning five Grammy Awards.
The record's producer Mark Ronson said in a statement: "She was my musical soulmate and like a sister to me.
"This is one of the saddest days of my life."
Hip-hop producer Salaam Remi, who also worked on Winehouse's albums Frank and Back To Black, paid tribute to her on Twitter saying: "Very Very Sad Day. Just lost a Great Friend and a Sister."
He added: "RIP my baby SiS Cherry Winehouse. Love ya always."
News of her death has also prompted other tributes from other celebrity friends.
TV presenter Kelly Osbourne tweeted: "i cant even breath right now im crying so hard i just lost 1 of my best friends. i love you forever Amy & will never forget the real you!"
Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood announced he is to dedicate his Saturday night show on Absolute Radio to Winehouse. He said: "It's a very sad loss of a very good friend I spent many great times with".
He added a reunion performance by his former group The Faces in Hurtwood, Surrey, would also be dedicated to the singer.
BBC Radio 1 DJ Fearne Cotton wrote: "Can not believe the news. Amy was a special girl. The saddest news."
Daily Telegraph rock critic Neil McCormick said he was "utterly shocked" at her death.

Last appearance
He said she had appeared focused when giving an "incredible performance" for a recent studio recording of a duet with Tony Bennett.
"It's deeply sad. It's the most completely tragic waste of talent that I can remember," he added.
Doug Charles-Ridler, co-owner of Winehouse's favourite Camden pub The Hawley Arms, called her "a special person with a good soul," adding, "this should not have happened".
Winehouse made her last public appearance on Wednesday night when she joined her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield on stage at The Roundhouse in Camden.
The singer danced with Bromfield and encouraged the audience to buy her album in the impromptu appearance before leaving the stage.
At the time she pulled out of the tour, her spokesman had said everyone wanted to do everything to "help her return to her best".
 
At the scene: Sangita Myska
BBC News in Camden
Dozens of bouquets and candles have been left on the railings at the end of the road where Amy Winehouse lived. Around 70 people, many of them under the age of 18, have gathered here at Camden Square, the place where neighbours say the singer had recently bought a home.
Eyewitnesses say two ambulances arrived at the address just after 1600 BST and that police cars arrived shortly afterwards. Well over a dozen police officers are now quietly standing guard outside her home.

publicado na BBC

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Troubled diva Amy Winehouse dead at 27
by Jill Lawless
via Associated Press

Few artists summed up their own career in a single song - a single line - as well as Amy Winehouse.
"They tried to make me go to rehab," she sang on her world-conquering 2006 single, "Rehab." "I said 'No, no no.'"
Occasionally, she said yes, but to no avail: repeated stints in hospitals and clinics couldn't stop alcohol and drugs scuttling the career of a singer whose distinctive voice, rich mix of influences and heart-on-her sleeve sensibility seemed to promise great things.
In her short lifetime, Winehouse too often made headlines because of drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, destructive relationships and abortive performances. But it's her small but powerful body of recorded music that will be her legacy.
The singer was found dead Saturday by ambulance crews called to her home in north London's Camden area, a youth-culture mecca known for its music scene, its pubs - and the availability of illegal drugs.
The London Ambulance Service said Winehouse had died before crews arrived at the house in leafy Camden Square. The cause of death was not immediately known.
The singer's body was taken from her home by private ambulance to a London mortuary where post-mortem examinations were to be carried out either Sunday or Monday. Police said in a statement no arrests have been made in connection with her death.
It was not a complete surprise, but the news was still a huge shock for millions around the world. The size of Winehouse's appeal was reflected in the extraordinary range of people paying tribute as they heard the news, from Demi Moore - who tweeted "Truly sad news ... May her troubled soul find peace" - to chef Jamie Oliver, who wrote "such a waste, raw talent" on the social networking site.
Tony Bennett, who recorded the pop standard "Body And Soul" with Winehouse at Abbey Road Studios in London in March for an upcoming duets album, called her "an artist of immense proportions."
"She was an extraordinary musician with a rare intuition as a vocalist and I am truly devastated that her exceptional talent has come to such an early end," he said.
Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood said he was dedicating Saturday's reunion performance of his band The Faces to Winehouse. "It's a very sad loss of a very good friend I spent many great times with," he said.
Winehouse was something rare in an increasingly homogenized music business - an outsized personality and an unclassifiable talent.
She 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.
"I didn't go out looking to be famous," Winehouse told the Associated Press when the album 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.
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.
Fans who had kept the faith waited in vain for a followup to "Back to Black."
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 was "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. Before a June 2011 concert in Belgrade - the first stop on a planned European comeback tour - her hotel was stripped of booze. It did no good,
Winehouse swayed and slurred her way through barely recognizable songs, as her band played gamely and the audience jeered and booed.
Winehouse flew home. Her management canceled the tour, saying Winehouse would take some time off to recover.
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.
Her last public appearance came three days before her death, when she briefly joined her goddaughter, singer Dionne Bromfield, on stage at The Roundhouse in Camden, just around the corner from her home.
Despite the years of frustration and disappointment, Winehouse retained a huge body of fans, all hoping she would find her feet again. Some gathered outside her home after her death, laying flowers, comforting each other and taking in the police tape and ambulance that marked the end of her journey.
Winehouse is survived by her parents. Her father, Mitch, who released a jazz album of his own, was in New York when he heard the news of her death and immediately flew back.
Winehouse's spokesman, Chris Goodman, said "everyone who was involved with Amy is shocked and devastated." He said the family would issue a statement when they were ready. [VER VÍDEO]

Amy Winehouse joins the list of rock stars ravaged by drugs

Despite the self-awareness in her lyrics, the singer's death – like Kurt Cobain's – was shocking in its awful predictability
by Sean O'Hagan

"Now he's gone and joined that stupid club, I told him not to join that stupid club." These were the rueful words uttered by Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor, on hearing of her son's death by suicide on 8 April 1994. The "stupid club" she was referring to included Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, all of whom, like Cobain, died aged 27, having struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. Now, Amy Winehouse, the troubled wild child of British pop, has joined them.
In many ways, Winehouse's chaotic life in the spotlight echoed the excesses of other rock'n'roll eras, and recalled a time, not that long ago, when, to borrow music writer Nick Kent's description of the young Keith Richards, being "elegantly wasted", was de rigueur for all aspiring rock'n'roll outlaws.
Except that the image and the reality, as Kent found out to his cost though his own long heroin addiction, are worlds apart. Kent survived to tell his cautionary tale in a recent, often self-lacerating, memoir; many of those he wrote about did not.
They also include Keith Moon, Gram Parsons, Tim Buckley, Sid Vicious, Phil Lynott and Johnny Thunders, all of whom died from the chemical excesses of the rock'n'roll lifestyle.
That was then; this is now. Since the heady days of Britpop, when cocaine and alcohol fuelled a brief hedonistic home-grown pop culture, pop music has seemed to have cleaned up its act somewhat.
What separated Winehouse and Pete Doherty from the dissolute rock stars that preceded them, though, was the public nature of their excesses and of their respective struggles. Back in the early 1970s, when Keith Richards was, to quote Kent, "the world's most elegantly wasted man", avid readers of the music press could only have guessed at what exotic substances he had ingested alongside his daily bottle of Jack Daniel's.
Amy Winehouse did not just have the paparazzi to contend with, but also the public, several of whom trailed her with their mobile phone cameras on her regular late-night sorties to local shops to buy booze and fags. She lived out her tragically short post-fame life in the public gaze.
In her book, Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia mapped out western culture as one long battleground between chaos and untrammelled desire. Rock stars, she wrote, are the great Dionysian heroes of our age, acting out our wildest desires and darkest dramas on our behalf so that we do not have to.
What, though, was Amy Winehouse acting out on our behalf with each bedraggled public appearance, each chaotic drunken performance, each failed attempt at rehabilitation? Even her knowing and wilfully self-celebratory song Rehab suggests she was more than aware of her status as the last wild child in an age when her pop contemporaries often seemed to be embracing a lifestyle choice, a career rather than a vocation.
That knowingness, though, was nothing but a hollow boast against the daily, dogged and increasingly demeaning horrors of addiction.
Some will say that, ultimately, it was her choice, and that she was luckier than many in the escape routes from addiction offered by her wealth and fame. But in the maelstrom of sudden celebrity, the sensitive and the troubled can lose their moorings swiftly and with dreadful consequences.
For me, the version of the rock'n'roll lifestyle that Amy Winehouse played out in public always seemed like a desperate disguise, much like the scary tattoos she sported on her stick-thin arms and that straggly beehive that also harked back to an older pop era.
She did not so much embrace that outlaw lifestyle as attempt to hide in it. Her death, like Cobain's, was not shocking except in its awful predictability. That, on reflection, like the deaths of so many of her predecessors, is the most shocking thing about it.

Amy Winehouse obituary

Singer with a soul-steeped voice whose instantly successful Back to Black album reflected her tormented experience of love
by Caroline Sullivan
via The Guardian


Leading a rock'n'roll life has proved fatal to many artists, but few could be considered as much of a loss to music as Amy Winehouse, who has been found dead at the age of 27, the cause not immediately clear. One of the outstanding singers of her generation, she had suffered from drug addiction, and the loss of hope that goes with it. Her husky, soul-steeped voice belied both her youth and her London origins – singing from the gut is not just the province of older black American performers.
Winehouse's music spoke to people so persuasively that her second album, Back to Black, became Britain's bestselling record of 2007 and reached number two in the US, making her one of only a few British female soloists to achieve that level of transatlantic recognition. Its success spurred sales of her initially overlooked first album, Frank (2003), so titled because of the diary-style lyrics that produced songs such as Stronger Than Me, which railed against a "gay ladyboy" ex-boyfriend. The two sold a total of more than 10m copies worldwide.
Born to a Jewish family in north Finchley, north London, Winehouse grew up listening to the jazz albums of her taxi-driver father, Mitch. He and her pharmacist mother, Janis, later divorced.
Amy caught the performing bug so early that by the age of eight she was attending stage school. She spent time at three, including the Sylvia Young theatre school, central London, from which she was expelled for "not applying herself", and the Brit school in Croydon, south London. Rebellious instincts surfaced in her mid-teens: by 16, she had acquired her first tattoo and was smoking cannabis. "My parents pretty much realised that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really," she said later.
Her boyfriend of the time passed a cassette of her singing to a record company, which was impressed. "It was unlike anything that had ever come through my radar," said songwriter Felix Howard, who went on to collaborate with Winehouse on Frank. She signed a deal with the world's largest label, Universal, and was taken on by the management company run by Simon Fuller, the force behind Pop Idol and its television spin-offs. However, being in the bosom of the pop establishment turned Winehouse surly and defensive. When she was accused early on by the press of being one of Fuller's pop puppets, she retorted: "He's clever enough to know he can't fuck with me."
If Winehouse was not entirely singular – Dusty Springfield and Maggie Bell preceded her as white British pop singers whose complicated personal lives yielded unguarded, richly soulful music – she certainly stood out from almost every other artist under 40. When Frank was released, just after her 20th birthday, the prevailing female pop sound was the manicured slickness epitomised by Girls Aloud. Winehouse's disconcerting sultriness meant she was initially classified as a jazz vocalist. Despite being tipped by critics as a "buzz" act – borne out by two Brits nominations in 2004 – she did not catch the public's fancy, and Frank peaked at number 13 in the charts.
It was when she finished promoting the album and set about writing the follow-up that a remarkable transformation took place. During this time she met her future husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, who worked on the periphery of the music business as an assistant on video shoots. The attraction was apparently instant, at least on Winehouse's part, and when Fielder-Civil ended the relationship after a few months, she poured her depression into songs that would become Back to Black.
Of the months following their split, she said: "I had never felt the way I feel about him about anyone in my life. I thought we'd never see each other again. I wanted to die."
The album was released in late 2006, and when Winehouse began a round of concerts and TV appearances that autumn, it was obvious that she had spent the recent past walking on the wild side. She had lost several stone and acquired armfuls of tattoos, a mountainous beehive hairdo and, it was rumoured, drug and alcohol problems.
Typically forthright, she drew attention to the latter in Back to Black's first single, Rehab: "I don't never want to drink again, I just need a friend... They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no." Despite its subject, the song was infectiously upbeat, and became her first Top 10 hit, remaining in the charts for a near-record-breaking 57 weeks.
The whole album was also an instant, and huge, success. The jazz-lite that characterised Frank had been supplanted by sparky R&B, immediately hummable songs and, crucially, the performance of a lifetime from Winehouse, who sang as if her heart were damaged beyond repair. Critical acclaim was heaped on it – "One of the great breakthrough CDs of our time… when this lady sings about love, she means every word," said the US Entertainment Weekly magazine – and it appeared on numerous best-of-the-year lists. Its appeal transcended language barriers, sending it to number one in 18 countries, including the UK.
The great imponderable was whether Back to Black would have connected so strongly with listeners if Winehouse had not simultaneously been playing out her emotional dramas in public. Still wracked by the failure of her relationship with Fielder-Civil, her behaviour was erratic: her weight dropped further and the monstrous beehive got even taller. She seemed to lack the inhibitions that stop most people from "acting out" in public, which made her a tabloid dream – drawn by the scent of disturbed celebrity, paparazzi were soon following her around the streets of north London.
Perversely, as her life became more complex, her success increased. She won the 2007 Brit award for best female artist, and Ivor Novello awards for Rehab and Love Is a Losing Game. She also picked up Q magazine's best album trophy, and was nominated for that year's Mercury prize.
She unexpectedly reunited with Fielder-Civil in early 2007, and in May they married on impulse in Miami. If Winehouse had been fragile before, the marriage seemed to bring out the worst in her. She and her new husband became heavy drug users, and she was soon said to be injecting heroin. The couple were frequently photographed looking much the worse for wear, and Winehouse's arms bore the marks of self-inflicted cuts. She collapsed from an overdose in the summer, and paid the first of several unsuccessful visits to rehab.
Fielder-Civil was arrested in November, and subsequently pleaded guilty to attacking a pub landlord and attempting to pervert the course of justice by offering him £200,000 to keep quiet about it. While he was on remand, Winehouse lurched on as best she could. She cancelled concerts, struck up a friendship with fellow junkie Pete Doherty and tried rehab again. In the midst of it all, her talent still unquenched, she won five Grammy awards in early 2008.
The couple's relationship ended when Fielder-Civil was jailed in 2008 for 27 months. Despite initially saying she would wait for him, she divorced him in 2009 and moved temporarily to the Caribbean island of St Lucia, where she hoped to escape the pernicious influence of the drug crowd in Camden, north London. Her flat in Camden was conveniently close to her favourite pub, the Hawley Arms. While she claimed to have kicked drugs in St Lucia, she admitted that she was drinking to compensate – though not to excess, she insisted.
Several other relationships followed, the longest-lasting with Reg Traviss, director of the films Screwed and Psychosis. Winehouse also began to record the follow-up to Back to Black: the head of Universal, Lucian Grainge, pronounced the demos "fantastic". She also launched her own label, Lioness, whose first signing was her 13-year-old goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield.
Nonetheless, Winehouse was constantly in one sort of trouble or another. She was arrested several times for public order offences, hospitalised for emphysema and treated for an infection caused by silicone breast implants. And, always, there was evidence that she had not conquered the demons that she battled throughout her career: last year the tabloid papers ran a photo of her unconscious on a bench outside a pub, and last month she behaved so erratically on stage in the Serbian capital of Belgrade that the rest of her summer tour was cancelled.
Her final public appearance came three days before her death, at a gig by Bromfield at the Roundhouse, Camden. Winehouse danced in dreamy circles, then disappeared without singing a note. Her last recording was a duet with Tony Bennett, to be released on his album Duets II in September.
During the chaotic last years of her life, she was frequently compared to other singers with tempestuous existences, such as Billie Holiday and Édith Piaf. She is survived by her parents and brother, Alex.

* Amy Jade Winehouse, pop singer-songwriter, born 14 September 1983; died 23 July 2011

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