Amy Winehouse's untimely death at age 27 is nothing but sad - Oregonian
Brian Kersey/The Associated Press/2007Amy Winehouse, performing in 2007 in Chicago, was found dead Saturday at her home in London.British singer Amy Winehouse was 27 years old when she was found dead in her London home on Saturday. That the outcome felt so inevitable, so cliche, made it all the more sad.
Unlike most sad stories in a tragic world, hers was headline news because she was famous -- though, by the time the predictable happened, it might have been hard to remember Winehouse once had so much talent and so much promise.
For years her music -- powered by a big, soulful voice -- had been overshadowed by drug- and alcohol-fueled behavior. It was as if her name had officially been changed to Troubled Singer Amy Winehouse. Or perhaps she had taken the middle name Meltdown. The autopsy results will come later, but it's hard to imagine anything other than intoxicants turned toxic.
But in 2007, she was one of the biggest singers in the world. A year earlier, her second album, "Back to Black," had been released in Europe. It arrived in the United States in 2007 and took off on the strength of her biggest hit, the prophetic "Rehab."
To anyone who was introduced to Winehouse through that song, the first they heard from her was the lyric, "They tried to make me go to rehab, I said 'No, no, no.' "
On the album, which sold more than 1 million copies and won five Grammy Awards in 2008, "Rehab" is followed by "You Know I'm No Good":
I cheated myself,
like I knew I would.
I told you I was trouble.
Yeah, you know that I'm no good.
Obviously Amy Winehouse had her troubles well before success. Fame and fortune only played the part of magnifying glass. Cameras were there to capture every stumble, every wrecked night out, every mess of a performance.
She went from trendsetter -- igniting a retro-soul movement that sounded at once as classic as her beehive hairdo and as modern as her tattoos -- to punchline. She descended from celebrity to wrecked celebrity -- and, let's face it, that's our favorite celebrity of all.
Predictably, Twitter flooded with sympathetic notes and, even more predictably, bad jokes. Comedian Russell Brand wrote movingly about Winehouse and the tragedy of addiction -- no matter who the addict is. A Huffington Post writer wrote a quick and grossly opportunistic blog post about how "Amy Winehouse's untimely death is a wake-up call for small business owners." Her conclusion was that she was going to go to the gym, because small business owners have to stay in shape -- and, yes, that is definitely the lesson to be pulled from this and was in no way the dumbest thing put on the Internet on Sunday.
In death, as in life, she was celebrated and exploited.
And much was made of her age. Dying at the age of 27 puts her on a list with musicians including Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones.
On Twitter, musician Billy Bragg noted that what those musicians had in common wasn't age, but addiction.
Addiction that cut careers short, wasted talent and left fans wondering what might have been.
"Back to Black" is close to a perfect record. NPR Music's Ann Powers, writing after Winehouse's death, called the record "one of the great albums of the new century."
After that, Winehouse's legacy might be the singers who came after her. Most notable of the pack is Adele, the British soul singer who has this year's best-selling album. On Sunday afternoon, Adele's "21" was the No. 2 best-selling record on iTunes. In the top spot: "Back to Black."
Winehouse had slipped from the public consciousness recently before re-emerging last month on a stage in Belgrade. Again she was wrecked; the rest of the European tour -- another attempted comeback -- was canceled. A spokesman said Winehouse would take all the time and be given all the support necessary to get the singer back to performing at her best.
And then, sadly, she died.
-- Ryan White
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