FEATURE:
We Can Only Hold Her
Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black at Fifteen
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THERE is not much more…
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley
that I can say about Amy Winehouse’s 2006 album, Back to Black. Her second album (she sadly died before we could get a third alumni) turns fifteen on 27th October. I have written about the album quite a bit. Because it is fifteen and we sadly lost the iconic singer in 2011, I wanted to pay tribute to one of the most moving, powerful and extraordinary albums from any artist of the past thirty years. Winehouse was this incredible talent that we will probably not see the likes of again! 2003’s Frank provides a stunning window into the talents of Winehouse. Combining Jazz, Soul and R&B, it is considered a promising lead-up to the masterpiece of Back to Black. I love Frank, and I feel that it is Winehouse happy and nodding to her musical heroines. Back to Black is a glossier, bigger and more important album - in the sense that the production and songwriting is very different to that of Frank. Heartache and romantic struggle are much more at the heart; perhaps a slightly heavier listen than Frank. Winehouse developed as a singer and songwriter between albums. Establishing herself as one of the greatest vocalists and scribes of her generation, Back to Black seemed to capture all of her talent, power and poise over the course of eleven songs. Winehouse predominantly based the album on her tumultuous relationship with then-ex-boyfriend and future-husband Blake Fielder-Civil.
Their short-lived separation spurred her to create an album that explores themes of guilt, grief, infidelity and heartbreak in a relationship. If some look at tracks like Rehab (which turned fifteen on 23rd October) as a portent of what would become of Winehouse and the course her life would take, I don’t think one should use Back to Black as this sort of unsettling prophecy; a window into how things would unravel. Back to Black is an album that has the girl group Pop and Soul sound of the 1960s very close to its core. With producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson offering different styles and strengths, there is this awesome blend of the modern and classical. Between 2005 and 2006, Amy Winehouse recorded the album's songs with Remi at Instrumental Zoo Studios in Miami. She then recorded with Ronson and the Dap-Kings (Sharon Jones’ band) at Chung King Studios and Daptone Records in New York. Not many records have reached the glory and stature of Back to Black. I heard the album in 2006 and, knowing Winehouse’s work, I could tell that she had hit her stride and was entering this exciting new phase. I thought there would be many more albums and she would become this globe-conquering act – sad to think what could have been if she had not passed at the age of twenty-seven. On its fifteenth anniversary, I wanted to return to one of the finest albums ever.
I am going to bring in a couple of reviews of Back to Black before closing things off. In their effusive review, this is what The A.V. Club had to say:
“Any singer can opt out of rehab (just ask Britney Spears), but it takes an especially gargantuan pair of what Stephen Colbert has indelibly (and indelicately) dubbed "lady balls" to transform a stubborn refusal to seek help into a hit song. British pop chanteuse Amy Winehouse accordingly exudes astonishing levels of chutzpah on Back To Black, her much-buzzed-about new disc. Naming her first two songs/singles "Rehab" (as in, they tried to make her go but she said "no, no, no") and "You Know I'm No Good" is only the beginning. Winehouse has perfected her bad-girl shtick on albums and in her frequent misadventures in the British tabloid press, but there's surprising substance behind all the sneering style.
Back To Black has a hook as simple as it is irresistible. Winehouse's boozy, brawling, self-destructive 'tude is hip-hop and contemporary, but her unashamedly retro sound hearkens giddily back to Motown and girl groups of the '50s and '60s. There's something beguilingly perverse about the incongruity between Winehouse's trifling lyrical concerns and Back To Black's wall-of-sound richness. Winehouse might sing about sketchy acquaintances smoking too much of her weed, or a beau who made her miss a Slick Rick concert, but the songcraft is as lush as anything Phil Spector has cooked up.
Back To Black's tight 11 tracks were produced entirely by Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, two dependable hip-hop heads with impeccable pop instincts, and "You Know I'm No Good" originally hit the States as a Ronson-produced Ghostface track from More Fish, with Winehouse on the chorus. It takes one hell of a strong personality to take a track back from Ghostface, but Winehouse does it on the Ghostface-free version of "No Good" included here. Winehouse has the kind of smartass attitude and free-floating irreverence that'll take her far in the fickle, ephemeral world of British pop stardom. Thankfully, she has the kind of talent that'll take her even farther”.
If Frank didn’t get a huge amount of attention in the U.S., Back to Black corrected that. Frank got to thirty-three on the US Billboard 200; Back to Black reached number two. It was certified two times platinum in the U.S. (selling more than three-million copies) in 2015. An instant classic, Back to Black holds even more emotional potency today. The music still sounds phenomenal…though there is this sadness knowing Winehouse is not here to see how the album is impacted people. I am glad that her second studio album gained such glowing reviews! This is what Entertainment Weekly said in their assessment:
“What’s with all the offbeat, retro-minded British divas hitting our shores? Do the pop-reggae Lily Allen, the folky Corinne Bailey Rae, the classic-soul Joss Stone, and the nouveau-R&B Amy Winehouse represent a new vanguard? Or is it simply that, with domestic innovators like Erykah Badu off the radar, nature abhors a vacuum? Is it a bandwagon effect from Gnarls Barkley’s ”Crazy,” last year’s offbeat and retro-minded (albeit American-made) pop-soul smash?
Clearly there’s a trend here. Winehouse, a 23-year-old North London bad girl who resembles a tarted-up Sarah Silverman, is already a tabloid phenomenon at home, where Back To Black, her second CD, hit No. 1 on the pop charts in January. And by most any measure, she is the best of the bunch.
First there’s her vocal style, which bears traces of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington in its jazzy phrasing and tonality. It was impressive on Frank, her 2003 debut, even if her melismata needed a shorter leash. But on the tougher, tighter Back To Black, her vocals are reined in and laser-focused.
Much of it is produced by Mark Ronson, a DJ and vintage-R&B fan who has also worked with Lily Allen. His ear for period detail is remarkable, and without leaning on old samples, he makes the disc sound like an oldies mixtape with hip-hop-minded beats. The Motownish single ”Rehab” chugs along on Wurlitzer organ, baritone sax, and hand claps. ”You Know I’m No Good” stokes a dreamy groove with old-school Memphis horns. ”Tears Dry On Their Own” borrows from the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic ”Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” And the title track conjures the Shangri-Las, despite a reference to the male anatomy that surely would’ve made the ’60s girl-group heroines blush.
It’s precisely Winehouse’s lyrics — smartass, aching, flirty, and often straight-up nasty — that raise this expertly crafted set into the realm of true, of-the-minute originality. There are moments when that originality flags with boilerplate lover’s bellyaching (”Love is a fate resigned/Memories mar my mind”). But Winehouse always surprises — dropping a sly reference to Sammy Davis Jr. on the doo-wop-flavored ”Me & Mr. Jones” or complaining to a girlfriend about the latter’s marijuana-grubbing boyfriend on ”Addicted” (a highlight of the U.K. release, inexplicably pulled from the American CD). All told, it’s a near-perfect set that declares not just the arrival of a fully formed talent, but possibly the first major salvo of a new British Invasion. A-“.
Spend some time with the amazing Back to Black. As it turns fifteen, not only can we remember a wonderful talent and amazing human being! We can appreciate music that is so soulful, emotional, resonant, memorable and exhilarating. Possessed of a voice that is like nothing else, we will be talking about Back to Black for decades to come! On its anniversary, we will listen to Amy Winehouse’s opus and we will…
REMEMBER what she gave to the world.