Amy Winehouse died 8 years ago - I still feel guilty
Clickbait only works if we click. Stop clicking.
We make intimate relationships with certain voices. Voices that hold within them the joys and pains we feel, but deeper than we dare, more bravely than we dare. We turn to them for understanding, comfort, and inspiration, and to celebrate their gift.
Amy Winehouse had one of those voices. With the technical prowess and individuality of tone, pitch, range and power that define voices labeled ‘unique’. But that was not the heart of its allure. Her delivery makes her voice captivating. Her pacing, word placing, jerky intonation, unpredictable rhythms. She sings what she likes, how she likes. No constraints.
It is impossible to sing along to an Amy Winehouse song, you sound mannered and insincere. And sincerity, — constant, shameless, naked sincerity, — is its essence. We listen, heart-in-mouth because we know we are not able or willing to be that exposed.
A different loss
I have loved many voices. The vessels of some have left us, sometimes tragically, sometimes triumphantly, always too soon. But the music remains, and so the love affair can continue, sustained by a living, expanding intimacy with their legacy.
But Amy Winehouse is different. My relationship with her legacy is different. When I hear her songs, the weight of loss is louder than her magnificent voice, amplified by guilt.
Just another girl
We hear how the difficulties in Amy’s life led to her untimely death. Her parents’ divorce, her eating disorder, her battles with addictions to alcohol and drugs. She got in with the wrong crowd; she married the wrong man. She was strong-willed, self-destructive, not inclined to help herself or to let others help her.
These challenges played their part. But this is a generic description of thousands of young girls. Girls that do not precipitously decline to their death at 27.
We turned on her
‘It was just a matter of time.’ That’s what we all said when Amy died. How did we know this? We knew because we watched her exuberant sensuality decay to bones with little flesh. We saw her scratched arms, her bloodied feet. We had ringside seats when she was booed off stage, too lost to sing for us.
In our name, the paparazzi broadcasted every moment of her disintegration. In our name, they provoked her, hounded her, dehumanized her. They could have revealed crumbs of her uncommon gifts for us to feast on (and how we would have feasted). But they believed we had bigger appetites for her destruction, and they were right.
The night before she died, Amy told her bodyguard she’d give back her voice just to walk down the street with no hassle.
She gave us her wondrous talent, and we locked her up.
Life Was A Losing Game
I stopped listening to Amy Winehouse after she died. I switched channels when she poured out of the radio. I played other CDs. I didn’t buy ‘Lioness: hidden treasures’.
Asif Kapadia’s testimonial film brought her back to me. Brought me back to her. Seeing the early footage of her luminous, unbridled talent made me yearn for a different ending.
I started singing Love Is A Losing Game. Amy wrote it about her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, but it could be about her relationship with us, the fans that loved but did not protect her. That is what it now means to me.
Every click counts
There can be no different ending for Amy. But we can be different. We berate the media, but market forces drive them. They give us what the data shows we want. If we show we don’t want it, if we show we want something different, it will change.
And we can, as individuals, show what we want and what we don’t want. Every click is counted, which means every click counts.
I am as susceptible as the next person to the allure of a seductive headline. But I also have free will to choose. And now I choose. I choose not to click on feuds between artists. I choose not to click on what is happening to their weight, their clothes, their love lives. I choose to click on their work, their words, their artistry, their inspirations.
It’s a small thing, meaningless perhaps, but it helps with the guilt.
