Amy Winehouse, Entirely Herself

There are voices that make a room quieter. Amy Winehouse had one of them, although the room she sang about was rarely quiet for long.

There might be an argument in it, a cigarette burning somewhere, a joke delivered at precisely the wrong moment and a heart being treated rather carelessly. What made her extraordinary was not simply that she sang about these things. It was that she could make the listener feel as though she had turned towards them halfway through a conversation and decided, suddenly, to tell the truth.

That truth was not always flattering. It was often funny. It could be devastating. And it was almost never tidy.

A voice with a point of view

Winehouse grew up in north London surrounded by music, with jazz and soul among the sounds that helped shape her taste. Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan were important to her, and you can hear something of that affection in the way she bends a phrase or lets a note arrive a little behind your expectation.

Her first album, Frank, appeared in 2003. It is an excellent place to meet her: young, observant, musically assured and occasionally quite willing to be unkind. The songs have jazz, soul, hip-hop and pop in their company, but the voice belongs unmistakably to Winehouse.

On “Stronger Than Me,” she sounds exasperated rather than wounded. “You Sent Me Flying” allows the hurt to linger longer. There is humour in the details, a refusal to be especially polite about disappointment, and a sense that she is listening closely to her own contradictions.

Her second and final studio album, Back to Black, arrived in 2006. Its sound drew on older soul and girl-group records while remaining unmistakably of its own moment. Producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi helped shape different parts of the record, and the musicians and collaborators around her mattered. So did Winehouse’s songwriting, her phrasing and her ability to make a carefully constructed performance feel dangerously immediate.

The sound of saying too much

“Back to Black” is not subtle about grief, but it is precise. “Love Is a Losing Game” takes a larger feeling and gives it just enough room to hurt. “Tears Dry on Their Own” moves with an energy that might almost persuade you everything will be all right, even while the words are less certain.

Then there is “You Know I’m No Good,” where self-awareness arrives without the comforting promise of self-improvement. Winehouse could write herself as the injured party and as someone capable of doing injury. That refusal to make herself consistently sympathetic gives the songs much of their life.

Her voice was not a polished ornament placed on top of a song. It could sound rough, playful, weary or suddenly tender. Some listeners may find the emotional intensity overwhelming, or prefer the looser arrangements of Frank to the more tightly framed world of Back to Black. That is fair. Greatness need not mean that every song suits every evening.

What remains remarkable is how much personality she could fit into a phrase. You do not merely hear that someone is disappointed. You hear the particular way Amy Winehouse is disappointed, and perhaps the joke she makes before admitting it.

The look that belonged to her

The beehive is impossible to separate from the public image: high, dark and entirely uninterested in being overlooked. There was the winged eyeliner, the tattoos, the hoop earrings and a wardrobe that could bring together a fitted dress, ballet flats, denim and the visual language of earlier decades.

Her look drew on 1960s girl groups, vintage Americana and the streets of contemporary London, among other influences. The result felt neither like a museum costume nor an attempt to disappear into the past. It was put together by someone who knew what she liked and made it her own.

That is what makes her style worth discussing alongside her music. Winehouse understood the power of a silhouette and a reference, but the details were lived in. The beehive could be a little unruly. The eyeliner did not ask to be mistaken for restraint. There was glamour, certainly, but it was glamour with personality and a little defiance.

One need not copy any of it literally to appreciate the lesson. Personal style can be assembled from things that already exist: an old photograph, a record sleeve, a favourite pair of shoes. What matters is the way they come together on the person wearing them.

The woman beyond the image

Winehouse became closely associated with Camden, its pubs, music venues and streets. It is tempting to turn that connection into an attractive little legend: the singer, the neighbourhood, the late nights. But a neighbourhood is not a stage set, and a person is not a character invented for our entertainment.

Her struggles with addiction and mental health were publicly visible, often in ways that invited cruelty rather than care. She could be difficult and her life could be chaotic. None of that makes her suffering a romantic accessory to the music, and illness should not be mistaken for an artistic requirement.

She died from alcohol poisoning in 2011, aged 27. The loss is painful partly because it is impossible to know what she might have made next. It is also worth remembering that she was already an accomplished artist, not simply a promise left unfulfilled.

The attention around her life raises uncomfortable questions about how much of a person the public thinks it is entitled to consume. We can admire the records, discuss the contradictions and acknowledge the harm without treating her worst moments as the most interesting thing about her.

Put the record on

Listen to Frank when you want the wit and the quick glance across the table. Listen to Back to Black when you have a little more time and are prepared to be less comfortable. Listen closely enough and there are small pleasures inside the sadness: the timing of a line, a change in the band, the way a voice can sound amused and heartbroken almost at once.

Amy Winehouse left us songs with the untidy generosity of someone willing to say more than most people would admit. The least we can do is listen to them as carefully as she made them.