Troubled Winehouse dies at 27
Updated: 2011-07-25 10:03
By Jill Lawless (China Daily/Agencies)
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A woman ties flowers to a railing on Sunday near the house in north London where the body of pop star Amy Winehouse was found the previous day. Carl Court / Agence France-Presse |
Amy Winehouse dies at 27
Amy Winehouse has died
LONDON - 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 on Saturday at age 27 by ambulance crews called to her home in north London's Camden area. She joins the ranks of drug-addled rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison, who died at the same age.
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 on 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. 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.
She attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, 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.
The album she eventually produced was a sensation.
Released in Britain in the fall of 2006, Back to Black brought Winehouse global fame.
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.