| Fresh from her triumphant performance at the Brits where she picked up
the British Female Solo Artist award, Amy Winehouse released her anticipated new
single, Back To Black, released in April 2007 through Island Records. The
single is the title track from Amy’s stunning album Back To Black, which this
week re-gained the no. 1 slot, and looks set to go triple –platinum in a matter
of weeks with sales fast approaching the 900,000 mark. Amy is currently in the
middle of her sell-out UK tour which will be followed by her first ever US tour.
The American dates kick off with a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom in New
York City where Amy will also mark her US television debut with a
performance on the David Letterman Show.
It’s been a fantastic few months for Amy since the release, at the end of
October ’06, of her anthemic single Rehab. Rehab entered the chart at no. 7
and was followed by Black To Black which was released to universal acclaim and
finished the year topping many end of year polls. A second single, You Know I’m
No Good, featuring Ghostface Killah, was released in January and gave Amy her
second big hit. Two Brit nominations, a South Bank Show award and an Elle Style
award followed before Amy scooped the British Best Female last week at Earl’s
Court. Amy’s live shows feature songs drawn from her platinum debut Frank and
Back To Black. Frank established Amy as one of the most exciting and
challenging artists in pop music, and Back To Black proves, beyond any
reasonable or unreasonable doubt, what a truly remarkable talent she is.
Winehouse’s song-writing and fearlessness as a lyric writer has been grafted
onto some of the most astonishing material of her short career so far. Back To
Black sees her teaming up once again with Frank producer Salaam Remi and, for
the first time, with New Yorker Mark Ronson (Lily Allen, Robbie Williams and
Christina Aguilera).
Two years ago, following the success of Frank, Amy began thinking about
what she’d like to do with her second record. Frank was her grand and suitably
blunt-speaking break-up record, and it won her a battalion of fans around the
world, marking her out as one of the most distinct new voices in pop;
confessional, elemental and with that rarest of combinations: humour and soul.
“I didn’t want to play the jazz thing up too much again. I was bored of
complicated chord structures and needed something more direct. I’d been
listening to a lot of girl-groups from the fifties and sixties. I liked the
simplicity of that stuff. It just gets to the point.” You can hear it on the
subtley Supremes-referencing intro of Back To Black. But her reach stretches
further. While the girl-groups of the sixties to which she had become enthralled
contained their vocals, Amy can break loose with Aretha-style vocal stylings on
Just Friends or by turning the whole idea of drying out into a gospel
spiritual on the stunning opener Rehab. Love is a Losing Game is pure
classic modern song-writing: brief, to the point and drenched in emotion. Other
highlights include the Nas inspired Me and Mr Jones, the
beautiful Wake Up Alone, I’m No Good, the personal epiphany that you
can behave just as badly as all those guys that have messed you around and
stamped all over you, and the bluesy smooch of the title track, Back To
Black. |
Guy Moot & Felix Howard
