Who said selling records means selling out your sound?
If there is one singer who definitively proved the pop world could be injected with both heartbreak and true creativity, it was Amy Winehouse, a musician who understood that mainstream audiences don’t need to be sung down to. Winehouse’s tunes are uncompromising in their ferocity –unequivocally designed to batter the listener into submission, and they do absolutely nothing by halves.
Indeed, Winehouse spurned subtlety whenever possible, drawing great strength from an attitude that saw her bearing down furiously on every trouble she encountered in life, acting with resolve and without fear. It’s patronising to call her songs diary-entry-like – after all, such an approach only dismantles the great flights of creative fancy she took on tunes like ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ or ‘Cherry’ – but certainly her songs contain a sense of the real, a ragged version of reality that is and was wholly her own.
It’s a skill most apparent onBack To Black, but then again, all of Winehouse’s skills appear on that album: it is undoubtedly the late singer’s magnum opus, a buckshot of blues riffs and renegade attitude that sounds like nothing else added to the pop pantheon in the decade since its release.
Despite being only Winehouse’s second album, Back To Blackismarkedly assured, and the fact that it was her last further cements both its tragedy and its triumph – it has the sense of the final about it, a work of great pop art that stands tall but not alone.
No, not alone at all. There are those who have convincingly made the claim that Back To Black opened the door for everyone from Adele to Duffy, and Spin’s own editor Charles Aaron has gone on record to claim, “Amy Winehouse was the Nirvana moment for women [like Florence and The Machine and La Roux].” Certainly the sheer scale of her choruses – the technical bravery, and the unashamed might of a song like ‘Me & Mr Jones’ – had an impact on pop that can be measured simply by flicking from channel to channel during radio primetime, noting how distinctly Winehouse-esque the hits sound.
But Winehouse didn’t only have a profound effect on the world of pop. The genre playfulness and distinct distrust she had of being pigeonholed, evident all across Back To Black, alsomeans her lineage can also be traced through the work of less obvious disciples. American rockers and self-confessed Winehouse fans Haim might not share their mentor’s jazz influences, but their music has the same category-upsetting outrage about it, as well as a hook-happy sense of fun.
And about that, actually: though she might sometimes be remembered for her more dour songs – dark works like ‘Back To Black’ – Winehouse was overwhelmingly fun, always. She never once allowed her sense of humour to shrivel or suffer, and even a song like ‘Rehab’ has a knowing, tongue-in-cheek naughtiness about it, mixed up with all kinds of “I’m aware you’ve read the tabloid stories about me” levels of honesty.
It’s that selfsame sense of mischief that has assured the Winehouse musical torch has been picked up by musicians of all ilks and breeds, and why her influence spreads to the world of alt and indie. After all, there’s a reason why indie darlings Boy & Bear covered Winehouse as part of triple j’s Like A Version: for all the stuffy critical writing out there about Winehouse, she rattled and raged against every pompous line written about her, crafting songs that defy easy explanation and the endless theorising of critics.
Back To Black is ten years old this month. But it’s also not, not at all: it hasn’t aged a single day. When something as vital as that record is contributed to the pop annals, it never really goes away, or changes, or grows new worry lines. It stays as important as ever, as does its creator: a popsmith with a beating heart worn openly, and the finest musical ear about.
Are you aBack To Black fanatic? Then head along to the Factory Theatre tonight, Friday October 21, forThe Amy Winehouse Show. Tickets are still available here.
