Amy Winehouse, the British singer who found worldwide fame with a smoky, hip-hop-inflected take on retro soul, yet became a tabloid fixture as her problems with drugs and alcohol brought about a strikingly public career collapse, was found dead on Saturday in her home in London. She was 27.
The cause was not immediately known. The London police said they had been called to an address in Camden Square in northern London on Saturday afternoon and found a 27-year-old woman, and pronounced her dead at the scene. The police did not identify the body, but the London Ambulance Service said it was that of Winehouse, the Associated Press reported.
The police said that they were investigating the circumstances of the death, but that "at this early stage it is being treated as unexplained."
Instantly recognizable from the heavy makeup and high beehive hairdo she borrowed from the Ronettes, Winehouse became one of the most acclaimed young singers of the 2000s, selling millions of albums, winning five Grammy Awards and kicking off the British trend of retro soul and R&B that continues today.
Yet from the moment she arrived on the international pop scene in 2007, Winehouse had an image that seemed almost defiantly self-destructive. In songs like "You Know I’m No Good," she sang alcohol-soaked regrets of failed romances, and for many listeners the lyrics to the song "Rehab" — which won her three of the five Grammys she received in 2008 — crystallized her public persona. "They tried to make me go to rehab," she sang, "I said, ‘No, no, no.’"
Those songs were from her second album, "Back to Black," which was released in Britain in late 2006 and in the United States in 2007. Her first, "Frank," had established her as a budding star in Britain. But "Back in Black," recorded with the producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, made her an international sensation, with a darkly stylish update on the sound of classic 1960s R&B that was admired by critics and the public alike.
You've said you admire Dean Martin. He got to the point where people expected a certain image, so when he wasn't drinking, he had to have colored water in his glass.
No, it was the opposite -- the other way around. He started out with colored water, and then in the end he did start drinking like that."
Do you ever feel like you'll let people down if they expect this raconteur who's wild and you don't deliver?
A: "No. If someone goes 'Amy, let me buy you tequila,' and I'm like 'No, no, I'm not drinking,' if they ask why, I always say that I'm on antibiotics. Because I'm ashamed to just go, 'You know, I'm just not drinking.' I have to say that I'm on a course of medication, because I feel ashamed (about abstaining)."
The label went with another single before "Rehab," and I wondered if it's because they were nervous because Americans are conflicted with our attitudes about consumption.
I don't know. Everyone knows that there's certain things that aren't good for you, but there's a fine line between enjoying yourself and being completely healthy. Or do you know what I mean? You can only be healthy to a point, where you're not having fun anymore. Does that make sense?"
Q: With the first album ("Frank"), you said you were in a defensive mode when you wrote that, more so than the second album ("Back to Black"). The second album, you wanted to write about consuming love and not be in that defensive posture. Do I have that right?
Yeah, it's a lot less defensive. And it's very all or nothing. When I did the first album, I was smoking loads of weed, and I had that whole mentality of 'you don't know me, I don't need you, you don't love me, fuck you.' And when I wrote the second album, I was listening to a lot of pure '60s music, a lot of jukebox stuff -- and I was drinking a lot, which is a lot more of a depressive substance than weed.
"So my mentality flipped from 'Yeah, I don't need you, I'm gonna smoke a joint, I don't care' to listening to the jukebox and (sadly) standing with a drink.
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