News broke earlier today that Amy Winehouse had been found dead in her London apartment. The troubled, husky-voiced singer/songwriter was 27.
For someone so well known for her bombastic flourishes and drunken public missteps, Winehouse was reclusive—she notoriously gave an entire interview via her apartment’s intercom in 2008.
Winehouse had just turned 20 when her debut album, Frank, won rave reviews in 2003. In 2006, Winehouse released her second—and, to date, final—album, Back to Black, which earned five Grammys. But that album’s best known track, “Rehab,” would eventually become an obvious punchline in the following years.
After a lengthy sabbatical in St. Lucia in 2009, and another in Rio in January of this year, Winehouse, visibly healthier, always seemed primed for her comeback.
But she couldn’t maintain her sobriety. Just a month ago, Winehouse canceled her European tour after being booed off a Serbian stage. What made her disastrous performance in Belgrade so troubling was, Winehouse had only recently completed a voluntary stint in rehab in preparation for her summer performances, according to her spokesperson.
This March, Winehouse looked and sounded healthy, and she claimed she had been off drugs for an entire year. “I thought: ‘Girl, you’ve got to sort yourself out or you’ll be dead soon,'” she said. “I’ve finally escaped from hell.”
British music critic Neil McCormick: “It’s deeply sad. It’s the most completely tragic waste of talent that I can remember.”
Amy Winehouse’s too-short life, chronicled in photographs, after the cut below.
damn,amy. you were just too fucking young.
i hope you’re at peace now.
:(
Very sad. Lindsay Lohan will be next.
There is a theory that says that celebrities die in groups of three. Most of my friends and I think that LiLo will be the next one indeed.
The article you linked to does not say she’s been clean for three years – Amy Winehouse says she has been clean for a year and in this new photo shoot, her first in three years, Amy is looking healthier and happier in life.
Bleurgh. Was a sentence from a draft this morning. Will correct.
Also: good catch. Thanks for following the links—that’s actually pretty awesome.
umm okay then weirdos and ya i agree that linsdey lohan will be the next to die bye the rate that shes going what a drug addictic so bad for her
Alright, before everyone jumps down my throat for saying this, let me do a quick preface: Yes, Amy Winehouse died far too young. Yes, she was very talented. Yes, it is a terrible loss for her family.
That being said… I don’t feel sorry for her, nor do I find this ‘sad’. I think that she was incredibly childish, and selfish, to leave this world as she did. Amy was a woman with talent, and addiction issues. Sure, addiction is hard to beat. But it is immensely hard to feel sorry for someone who had EVERY possible treatment available to her, as well as the money to fund it.
What, exactly, outside her music, were her contributions? While many people who achieve fame seek to use their newfound wealth to help or inspire others, she wasted her money on drugs. Drugs like crack. Call me crass, but it’s rather weak and pathetic that she only put out ONE album the world took note of. (Honestly… which one of you honestly bought ‘Frank’ before ‘Back to Black’ came out? Oh, that’s right… not many.) She then proceeded to wander around in traffic wearing only a bra and jeans. Amy Winehouse also Let’s just put it in print: Amy Winehouse was a crackhead. And she died, like a lot of junkies seem to do. She cannot be afforded the excuse of having a lack of treatment; because just as she chose to continue using drugs, she continued to learn nothing from treatment.
Was she “clean”? Maybe from the drugs, but according to Perezhilton.com, as well a couple more reputable news websites, she KEPT DRINKING. Even once the autopsy is completed, I think it’s safe to assume that he extensive drug abuse contributed to her young death.
I do not seek to demonize Amy Winehouse, but rather bring the topic a little closer to earth. When someone dies, we tend to put them on a pedastal. (Micheal Jackson, anyone?) I myself am a former addict, and there comes a point when saying “Oh, she had her demons” and “How sad, what a terrible disease.” Addiction is indeed a disease, but it can be cured.
Earlier, I mentioned choices. Well, choices lead to becoming clean. Amy Winehouse had a choice. She had a choice the first time she used. And we addicts are lucky, because sometimes, we get a second chance to choose when we enter treatment: We can choose to get sober. We can choose to not use again. And if we relapse, we can choose to climb back up from that fall. We can choose a life of honesty, to no longer mislead ourselves into thinking we can drink or use again.
Amy Winehouse ultimately chose death. Even if her choices didn’t catch up to her until she reportedly went sober. She had chosen to use, and thus she chose to leave behind a family that loved her, and fans who eagerly awaited her return to music. She wanted to get high and drink, and went to rehab enough times to know what price she would pay if she repeated this awful cycle of use. She did not die of ignorance. She did not die of an accident, she died because of choice.
To her fans, the only consolation I can offer is that Amy got what she wanted. People don’t use because they love life, they use to escape. Amy has escaped, but sadly, she cannot return this time.
How can we say she will be missed? Because gossip blogs can’t make fun of the fact she so gratuitously fucked up? Over and over and over? Because
Very well said. Time to move on people!
I can’t entirely disagree with your assessment, but it is very difficult for me to read. I can’t in good faith agree with you that this isn’t a real tragedy, either, because I feel Winehouse was one of the best voices and minds of our time. Still, I understand your points—she never had it together, she was always a mess, she was never a real icon. She had every chance to make a choice. “Life is not a series of chances, but a series of choices”—I know it well.
And maybe we shouldn’t celebrate or mourn one life over another, but that contradicts the very idea of “celebrity.” My job is to celebrate, or nitpick, one life over another. That’s my contractual vantage. Your position— that we mustn’t romanticize or glorify human selfishness, for fear of demoralizing the living—is often at odds with mine, yes. But I try to make my writing coincide with those values.
Now, the part from Real Me: It’s scary to realize that even “good” people succumb to addictions, that even “good” people, as you put it, “choose death.” (I have heard self-destructiveness defined as “chronic suicide,” so your terming suits.) But loss is loss is loss, and as they say about grief, we will always grieve not only what somebody meant to us, but what they ought to have meant, in time. Every subsequent, missed opportunity—your dad who should’ve seen you get married, a friend’s 30th birthday, a dumb album from a singer you didn’t know—is a new, separate, loss.
Do her lifestyle choices mean she doesn’t deserve so much as a farewell? And while I totally appreciate your points—don’t doubt me on this one—we should be careful to not have it both ways. Yes, media judged her life, and we are analyzing her death, too, but saying “let’s ignore this news story because her life, for myriad reasons, was ultimately worthless” could well be an even nastier judgment.
I worry that I sound unappreciative, or that I’m picking a fight. I hope I’m not. I appreciate your careful, thoughtful response, its considered morality and ethicalness, and the painful reality that even the most out-of-control and unhinged have the abiding choice to change course. But my covering this story has, if no other benefit, the benefit of lending a forum for remarks like yours. And I would not willfully deny your comment’s importance, because it could save a life.
No drugs found in her system
Sorry for the difficulty in reading, I didn’t look it over before I posted it, so there’s tons of typos and run-ons.
You certainly don’t sound unappreciative, quite the contrary. And I agree, she was judged in life and death, and deserves to be lovingly remembered by those who’s lives she touched.
The purpose of my post, (which you seem to get but I just want to clarify) is not to say that she was an evil person, or that people don’t have the right to miss her and mourn her.
My purpose was to simply to state my opinion, and to remind everyone that there is a lesson to be learned here. To look at the biggest picture. Instead of making Amy Winehouse into a either a pariah or a martyr, to look upon her life as it was, and learn from it.
Ugh, I changed my post a little while you were posting (I have that editorial ability! Ha! But I apologize), but it did not interrupt your interpretation. I do usually shy from the idea of letting deaths become “teachable moments,” but this case is absolutely worthy of exception. Because Amy Winehouse met a common end, only in the public eye, we have a very slight margin of license to talk about why it shouldn’t have happened, and in a way we can’t or shouldn’t talk about family and friends. In that way, the death, like all celeb gossip, is just a mirror.
The image gallery has a certain salaciousness to it, maybe, but its narrative chronology underscores just how meteoric the slippery slope of addiction.
Thank you again for your thoughtfulness and clarity.
Oops! P.S.! “Difficulty in reading” was supposed to mean “hard truths, all up in this piece,” not “typos abound”! Oh, my gosh, if there even were any run-ons (in a comment on a gossip blog), please don’t apologize for them!
I just don’t know how the sun can keep rising day after day with Amy not here to see it……
It’s sad to hear this really. I mean, I remember listening to her songs and suddenly this. She is a legend.
she was a drunk and a druggy good day sir!
i loled
I said good day!
whats up with peoples pictures on the enternet
ya no kidding
ligit i want tha
Wait…this is LadyGaga, right?! They really resemble each other. Now see why I confused the two a few years back…
Rip, babe. I would’ve tried my very best and would have taken you deep in the forest if need be to help you cleanse in the light instead of drowning in it.