Amy Winehouse

• 1. Introduction

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  Amy Jade Winehouse died on the 23rd of July 2011, at her home in Camden Square, London. She was 27 years old. Her blood alcohol content was recorded at 0.416 percent , more than five times the legal drink-drive limit. The coroner returned a verdict of death by misadventure.

  The week after she died, eight of her songs appeared simultaneously on the UK singles chart, breaking a record for the most songs by a woman to do so at the same time. Back to Black, the album she had released five years earlier, had already sold over 20 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. At the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008, she had won five awards in a single night, tying the then-record for the most Grammys won by a female artist in one evening, and becoming the first British woman to win five.

  She grew up in Enfield and Southgate, the daughter of a taxi driver who sang Frank Sinatra around the house and a grandmother who had dated jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott. She learned tap dancing on Saturdays and formed a rap duo with a childhood friend. She got herself a guitar after experimenting with her brother's. She was, by one teacher's account, so gifted a writer she could have become a novelist or journalist.

  What turned all of that into Back to Black? What did she actually sound like, and where did the beehive and the black eyeliner come from? And what happened between the Grammy stage and Camden Square?

• 2. Jazz in the Blood

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  Winehouse was born at Chase Farm Hospital in Gordon Hill on the 14th of September 1983. Her father Mitchell, known as Mitch, was an amateur singer who drove a taxi; her mother Janis was a pharmacist. Her paternal grandmother Cynthia had been a singer herself and had dated Ronnie Scott, the jazz saxophonist whose Soho club became one of London's most famous. Many of her maternal uncles were professional jazz musicians.

  Mitch sang the songs of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett around the house. When Winehouse was sent to the headmistress at school, she would sing "Fly Me to the Moon" in the corridor on the way there. This was not a household where music was background noise; it was the family language.

  Her parents separated when she was nine. She moved with her mother and her mother's boyfriend to Whetstone, spending weekends with her father in Hatfield Heath, Essex. In 1992, her grandmother Cynthia steered her toward the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, where she spent Saturdays learning to sing, act, and tap dance. With her childhood friend Juliette Ashby, she briefly formed a rap duo called Sweet 'n' Sour.

  At the Sylvia Young Theatre School, where she auditioned by singing "On the Sunny Side of the Street", a teacher remembered her as an exceptional writer. She later attended the Mount School in Mill Hill and briefly the BRIT School in Selhurst, Croydon. Reports that she was expelled at 14 for piercing her nose were denied by both the school and her father, who said she simply transferred at 15. She picked up a guitar around the same time she began working as an entertainment journalist for the World Entertainment News Network , and joined the National Youth Jazz Orchestra.

• 3. Frank and the Island Deal

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  It was her best friend, soul singer Tyler James, who sent a demo tape to an A&R scout on her behalf. That tape eventually reached Darcus Beese at Island Records , but only after a circuitous route. Beese first heard her voice as a featured vocalist on productions by the Lewinson Brothers, and when he asked who she was, the manager told him he was not allowed to say. It took Beese several months of asking around before he found out.

  By then, Winehouse had already signed a publishing deal with EMI and was signed to Simon Fuller's 19 Management at £250 a week against future earnings, singing jazz standards at the Cobden Club. She was signed to Island while rival interest from EMI and Virgin was starting to build. Beese later told HitQuarters that the excitement around her was driven in part by a backlash against reality television music shows , audiences starved for fresh, genuine talent.

  Frank was released on the 20th of October 2003, produced mainly by Salaam Remi. Apart from two covers, Winehouse co-wrote every song. Critics praised the "cool, critical gaze" in the lyrics, and her voice was compared with those of Sarah Vaughan and Macy Gray. The album climbed the UK Albums Chart after a Brit Award nomination in 2004 and went on to achieve platinum sales. The lead single "Stronger Than Me" won Winehouse and Remi the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song. The album was also shortlisted for the 2004 Mercury Music Prize.

  Winehouse herself was not entirely satisfied. She later said she was "only 80 percent behind" the album, because Island Records had overruled her preferences on which songs and mixes to include. That dissatisfaction would drive the direction of everything that followed.

• 4. Back to Black

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  After Frank, Winehouse turned her attention away from jazz and toward the girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s. She hired Sharon Jones's longtime band, the Dap-Kings, to back her in the studio and on tour. In May 2006, demo tracks including "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab" appeared on Mark Ronson's radio show on East Village Radio in New York. The finished 11-track album was completed in five months, with production credits split between Remi and Ronson.

  Ronson later recalled in a 2010 interview that he liked working with Winehouse because she was blunt when she did not like his work. She, in turn, had mistaken him for a sound engineer when they first met, and had expected an older man with a beard. Mitch Winehouse described in his book Amy, My Daughter watching her take a CD of her own vocal takes out to his taxi to listen through the windows , checking how her voice would sound to most people, through an ordinary car stereo.

  Back to Black was released in the UK on the 30th of October 2006. It reached number one on the UK Albums Chart for two weeks in January 2007, slipped, then climbed back again through February. In the United States it entered at number seven on the Billboard 200. It was the best-selling album in the UK in 2007, with 1.85 million copies sold that year alone. By March 2008, it had sold 2,467,575 copies in the UK, placing it in the UK's top-ten best-selling albums of the 21st century.

  "Rehab" reached the top ten in both the UK and the US. Time magazine named it the Best Song of 2007. Writer Josh Tyrangiel wrote of Winehouse: "What she is is mouthy, funny, sultry, and quite possibly crazy," and called it "the best song of 2007." The title track peaked at number 25 in the UK but performed more strongly across mainland Europe. The album has since sold over 20 million copies worldwide, and in 2025 it was preserved in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

• 5. Five Grammys, One Night

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  On the 10th of February 2008, Winehouse performed "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab" via satellite from London's Riverside Studios at 3 a.m. UK time. She could not be at the ceremony in Los Angeles because her visa approval had not been processed in time.

  From that satellite link in the middle of the night, she won five Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album, all for "Rehab", and Best New Artist. This tied the then-record for the most Grammys won by a female artist in a single night and earned her an entry in the 2009 Guinness Book of Records for Most Grammy Awards Won by a British Female Act. Mark Ronson's work with her also won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year. Back to Black was additionally nominated for Album of the Year.

  At the end of her acceptance speech for Record of the Year, she said: "This is for London because Camden Town ain't burning down" , a reference to the 2008 Camden Market fire that had taken place just days before.

  Natalie Cole, who introduced Winehouse at the ceremony and who had herself battled substance-abuse problems while winning Best New Artist in 1975, was among those who questioned publicly whether Winehouse should have been honoured given her recent difficulties. Nick Gatfield, president of Island Records, was at the time considering releasing Winehouse to deal with her problems, but noted: "It's a reflection of her status that when you flick through the TV coverage of the Grammys, it's her image they use."

  After the Grammys, Back to Black catapulted to number two on the US Billboard 200.

• 6. The Look and the Sound

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  Winehouse's beehive was borrowed, deliberately, from the Ronettes. Her hairdresser Alex Foden constructed it as a weave. The Cleopatra makeup came from the same source. The Ronettes' lead singer Ronnie Spector was later shown a photograph of Winehouse in the New York Post and, without her glasses, said: "I don't know her, I never met her, and when I saw that pic, I thought, 'That's me!'"

  The bold red lipstick and heavy eyeliner came from Latinas Winehouse had observed in Miami while working with Salaam Remi on Back to Black. Former Rolling Stone editor Joe Levy described her personal style as a "knowing collage" , mixing Bettie Page with Brigitte Bardot and adding Ronnie Spector, in the same way her best music assembled sonic fragments borrowed from Motown, Stax, punk and early hip-hop.

  The BBC's Garry Mulholland called her "the pre-eminent vocal talent of her generation". Multiple publications, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times and Billboard, described her as a "retro-soul" singer. A writer in The Guardian later observed that her "idolisation of Dinah Washington and the Ronettes distinguished her from almost all newly minted pop singers of the early 2000s."

  The British press did not always agree. While the NME nominated her for Best Solo Artist and Best Music DVD in 2008, the same publication awarded her Worst Dressed Performer. She also appeared second on Richard Blackwell's 48th annual Ten Worst Dressed Women list, behind Victoria Beckham.

  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, which opened in December 2008, placed Winehouse in a thread of influence that began with Billie Holiday, continued through Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige, and ended with Winehouse.

• 7. Decline and Death

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  Winehouse's family believes that the mid-2006 death of her grandmother, a stabilising influence, set her off into addiction. In August 2007, she was hospitalised for what was reported as an overdose involving heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol. The Washington Post prewrote her obituary.

  In November 2007, the opening night of a 17-date tour was marred by booing and walkouts at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham. A critic wrote that it was "one of the saddest nights of my life... I saw a supremely talented artist reduced to tears, stumbling around the stage." She cancelled the remainder of her public appearances that year on her doctor's advice.

  According to her physician, Winehouse quit using illegal substances in 2008. In an October 2010 interview she said: "I literally woke up one day and was like, 'I don't want to do this any more." Alcohol, however, remained a problem. She was treated with Librium for alcohol withdrawal and anxiety, underwent psychological evaluations in 2010, but refused psychological therapy. Before her death, doctors recommended she undergo dialectical behaviour therapy.

  On the 18th of June 2011, Winehouse began a 12-leg European tour in Belgrade. Local media described her performance as a scandal; she was reportedly unable to remember the city she was in, the lyrics of her songs or the names of her own band members. On the 21st of June, she cancelled all remaining shows. Her last public appearance was on the 20th of July 2011, when she made a surprise appearance at Camden's Roundhouse to support her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield.

  Three days later, her bodyguard Andrew Morris found her unresponsive in her bedroom at 3:54 p.m. Two ambulances arrived at her Camden home and she was pronounced dead at the scene. The coroner's report, released in October 2011, found her blood alcohol content at 0.416 percent. A second inquest, delivered on the 8th of January 2013, confirmed the verdict: death by misadventure due to alcohol poisoning. Her brother Alex later shared his belief that Winehouse's bulimia had left her physically weaker and more susceptible. Her estate, worth around £4 million, passed to her parents.

  Her funeral was held on the 26th of July 2011 at Edgwarebury Lane Cemetery in North London. Her father Mitch delivered the eulogy. The service closed with mourners singing along to Carole King's "So Far Away", one of Winehouse's favourite songs. On the 16th of September 2012, her ashes were buried alongside those of her grandmother Cynthia Levy at the same cemetery.

• 8. Legacy and Foundation

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  The Amy Winehouse Foundation was launched on the 14th of September 2011 , what would have been her 28th birthday. Her brother Alex gave up his career as an online music journalist to work full-time for it. The foundation's aim is to help vulnerable or disadvantaged young people, working with charitable organisations to provide frontline support from offices in North London and New York.

  On the 12th of March 2013, with the help of Russell Brand, the foundation launched the Amy Winehouse Foundation Resilience Programme For Schools across the UK, focusing on education around drugs, alcohol and emotional issues. In October 2015, Mark Ronson became a patron.

  Artists who have cited Winehouse as an influence include Adele, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Billie Eilish, Sam Smith, Florence Welch, Lana Del Rey and Jorja Smith, among many others. Maura Johnston of The Village Voice wrote after her death that Winehouse's contralto had "a snap to it that enriched even the simplest syllables with a full spectrum of emotion." The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones wrote: "Nobody can match Winehouse's unique transitions or her utterly weird phrasings. She sounded like an original sixties soul star, developed when the landscape had no rules."

  In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked her at number 83 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2025, The Guardian included Back to Black on its list of defining events in popular culture of the 21st century. Bob Dylan, in March 2017, called her "the last real individualist around." Her last recording, a duet with Tony Bennett titled "Body and Soul" for his album Duets II, was released on the 14th of September 2011 , her birthday , on MTV and VH1.