Column: The short foregone song of Amy Winehouse - The Vancouver Sun
For several days after her death, you heard the rollcall.
Amy Winehouse had shuffled off her mortal coil and joined The 27 Club, the rock n roll pantheon of self-destructs who all managed to die three years before their third decade Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain. (Cobains mother, less kindly but with more cause, called it the Stupid Club.) The clubs founding member, bluesman Robert Johnson, died at 27 in 1938 of causes never made clear, possibly from strychnine poisoning or, more mythically and more appealing, from a deal he made with the devil. He was said to have surrendered his soul in return for mastery of the guitar. Thank gawd times have changed. Nowadays, people just take up Guitar Hero.
The devil that dogged Amy Winehouse was more mundane. So intertwined was her drug addiction with her art that it was impossible to think of one without the other, or to determine which informed the other more.
It likely killed her (the cause of death is still pending), but it was also the source of her peculiar talent.
She didnt want to go to rehab, and voila, she went platinum. No one had ever heard anything so refreshing, if thats the right word. Could she have been a singing sensation without that all-consuming streak of self-destructiveness? Maybe, but I bet she would not have enjoyed anywhere near the same cachet. Winehouse made addiction sound fun, and the gas that fuelled romance.
And when her music first hit the airwaves, I dont remember the listening public finding a song like Rehab upsetting. The public found it catchy, funny, a hummable ditty to ... what, one wonders now in retrospect? ... the right to drug-addled oblivion?
Which, by the way, I believe is everyones right, as long as you dont take anyone else with you to your grave.
It is just that in Winehouses case, it makes the outpouring of shock at her death sound especially hollow. The likes of Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher and Rihanna felt the need to tweet on her death? Oh, please. The entertainment industry, or the public, is shocked at her end? It beggars belief. What did we expect? That Winehouse would grow old to grandmother-hood? Winehouse was the wreck waiting to happen. And like wrecks, you couldnt take your eyes off her.
Considering her celebrity, its a surprise to learn that Winehouses discography consists entirely of two albums and several singles.
Her 2003 debut album, Frank, showed promise, but came and went without much notice. (Since being re-released, its gone triple platinum.)
It was her second album, Back To Black, released in 2006, that made her. In it, she sounded savvy and cool. And as wounded as she was by drugs and bad choices in boyfriends, at least her music gave the impression that she was someone capable of handling herself. The beehive hairdo, the batwing eyeliner, her hipsters smirk she gave the impression, to the public, anyway, that she was in on the joke.
It wasnt a joke. Winehouse was frailer than her music. Her music was her autobiography. And her death wasnt as untimely to use an overworked word in stories of her passing as it was self-predicted.
As it happens in these things, her death has sparked a new surge of record sales, just as it did for Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. By the end of the week, Back To Black was expected to top the charts in Britain. Its currently topping sales on Amazon.com., and Frank is in its top 10 list. And posthumous releases, which are said to be in the making already, are expected to sell just as well.
Theres something human and touching about that, that need to revisit. But theres something ravenous about it, too.
Celebrity can be consuming. And we never revere our stars as much as when we watch them flicker out and die.
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