25 Albums I Can't Live Without: #6
Amy Winehouse, "Back to Black"
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Amy Winehouse. I was at Lakewood Amphitheater in Atlanta to see two bands I like: The Fray with Eisley opening. The song I heard was “You Know I’m No Good.”
I turned to my buddy Jeremy who was at the show with me and asked if he knew who the artist was. He told me it was Amy Winehouse, and I was hooked.
Today, it’s easy to see Amy as a tragic figure, a victim of her own demons and addictions — and rightly so. But we also need to recognize her as a singular, once-in-a-lifetime talent, and her second album demonstrates this tremendously.
“Back to Black” borrows from ‘60s sounds but gives them a modern twist. Girl groups, Motown, and rocksteady are all in the mix, and Amy and her producers took these influences into the stratosphere.
The album kicks off with the big hit, “Rehab”:
“Me and Mr. Jones” takes the girl-group sound to another level. (Language warning here and in subsequent videos):
The title cut references drug use and depression, two issues that would affect Amy’s life until the end.
“Tears Dry On Their Own” borrows from “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” but Amy makes it her own.
“Wake Up Alone” is a song with Amy dreaming about the man she couldn’t have:
“Some Unholy War” is one of my favorite songs about the creative process:
“He Can Only Hold Her” is another Motown-influenced number:
“Addicted” is the last track on the UK version of the record, so I only learned about it in the last couple of years. It’s a tongue-in-cheek track about weed.
I’ve saved my two favorites for last. The rocksteady masterpiece “Just Friends” and the heartbreakingly jaded (yet poetic) love ballad “Love Is a Losing Game” are the two best tracks on the album by a longshot.
Amy Winehouse left this earth way too soon. Who knows what she could’ve accomplished if she had lived longer. Music fans like me miss her deeply because “Back to Black” is a singular masterpiece, the likes of which we’ll never hear again.
Photo credit: eddievanderwalt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons