Amy Winehouse: Should Have Gone to Rehab!
Amy Winehouse only released two studio albums during her lifetime. That’s an astonishing thing to think about.
Frank arrived in 2003, followed by Back to Black three years later. And yet, between those two records and a handful of other recordings, Amy created a body of work that has become hugely influential.
Her music drew from Jazz, Soul, Motown, girl groups, Reggae and Hip-Hop, but she never sounded like she was simply copying any of them.
She had that rare quality where you could hear the influences while still immediately knowing who was singing.
For a guitarist, Amy is particularly interesting because her songs often look deceptively simple. Underneath those simple-looking chord sequences are sophisticated arrangements, great melodies and a very strong sense of rhythm.
Frank
Amy’s debut album, Frank, was released in 2003. The record was heavily influenced by Jazz and introduced the world to a very different kind of British pop singer.
One of the standout songs was Stronger Than Me, which became Amy’s first Ivor Novello Award winner.
It wasn’t the enormous commercial breakthrough that Back to Black would become, but Frank made people sit up and take notice. Who was this young singer from London who sounded as though she’d spent her life listening to Jazz records?
And although her later material would move much more strongly towards Soul and Motown, the Jazz influence never really disappeared.
You can hear it in the way she phrases a lyric, where she places a note, and how casually she can sing around a melody.
That’s one reason her songs are so much fun to learn. You can know the chords and still have plenty to discover.
Back to Black
Three years later came Back to Black, a record that transformed Amy from an interesting new singer into a global star.
She worked with producers including Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, drawing heavily on 1960s soul, Motown and girl-group records. The result was extraordinary.
I once met the Island Records A&R man responsible for the album, Darcus Beese, and he shared a lesson from the experience that has always stuck with me: Never rush anything. Keep going until it’s perfect.
The fact that Back to Black was recorded across studios in Miami, New York and London tells you something about how much work went into getting it right. And the songs certainly justified the effort.
Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Back to Black, Tears Dry on Their Own and Love Is a Losing Game all became classics.
That’s an unusually strong collection of singles from one album. But the album tracks are just as interesting.
Me & Mr. Jones
One of my favourites is Me & Mr. Jones. It’s easy to overlook album tracks when an artist has so many enormous singles, but this is exactly the sort of song that demonstrates why Amy was more than a great voice.
There’s personality in the writing. There’s humour. There’s attitude.
And there’s that conversational quality that makes the lyrics feel like Amy is talking directly to you rather than delivering a carefully constructed pop song. That quality is difficult to fake.
You can learn the chords, but you can’t simply learn that attitude from a chord chart.
Tears Dry on Their Own
Another brilliant example is Tears Dry on Their Own. The song famously draws heavily on the melody and harmonic framework of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, the Motown classic associated with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
Amy and her collaborators didn’t hide from that influence. They took an existing musical idea and turned it into something completely different.
This is a recurring theme in Amy’s music — and in the music she grew up listening to.
She understood that great songwriting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You listen. You absorb. You borrow ideas. Then you turn them into something personal.
For guitarists and songwriters, that’s an important lesson. If you want to understand how music works, learn the records that inspired the records you love.
Valerie
The original was written and recorded by Liverpool indie band The Zutons in 2006.
Around the same time, Amy was working with Mark Ronson on Back to Black, and Ronson decided to rework Valerie around the retro soul sound that suited Amy so perfectly.
Released in 2007 as Mark Ronson featuring Amy Winehouse, it became enormous. In fact, it arguably became even more ubiquitous than some of Amy’s own records.
And this is where the song becomes particularly interesting from a working-musician perspective.
Some songs are hits. Some songs become standards. And then some songs become function-band furniture. Valerie belongs in that last category.
At weddings, parties and corporate gigs, it’s one of those tunes that can get called at almost any point in the night. And Amy’s vocal is a huge part of why it works.
She doesn’t sing it like a guest vocalist on somebody else’s record. She makes it sound like an Amy Winehouse song. That’s an important distinction.
Amy the Interpreter
Amy had an extraordinary ability to take other people’s material and make it her own. Valerie is one example. So are her recordings of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and I Heard It Through the Grapevine.
The latter had already been recorded by some of the greatest Soul singers of all time, yet Amy still managed to find her own character within it.
There’s a reason people often say that certain singers could sing the phone book and you’d still listen. Amy was one of those singers. Give her a great melody and she could make it sound personal.
That puts her in a long tradition of artists such as Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday and the other great interpreters of popular song.
The Album That Never Came
And then there’s the great unanswered question: What would Amy’s third album have sounded like?
There were reports that she wanted to explore Reggae and other musical directions. Given how deeply she loved older music, it’s not difficult to imagine her taking another unexpected turn.
Personally, I’d have loved to hear an Amy Winehouse version of Exodus. Can you imagine it? It would have been glorious. Of course, we’ll never know.
Amy died on 23 July 2011 at the age of 27 from alcohol poisoning.
Her death came after years of highly publicised struggles with substance misuse, and she subsequently became associated with the informal “27 Club”, alongside musicians including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Kurt Cobain.
There has been considerable discussion over the years about the circumstances surrounding her decline and death. Whatever the arguments over responsibility, the loss itself is not in doubt. We lost a remarkable singer-songwriter far too early.
Two Albums, an Enormous Legacy
What makes Amy Winehouse’s career so extraordinary is how little material there actually is. Two studio albums. That’s it.
And yet those records gave us Stronger Than Me, Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Back to Black, Tears Dry on Their Own, Love Is a Losing Game, Me & Mr. Jones and so many other songs that remain firmly in the repertoire.
Then there’s Valerie, a cover that became one of the most recognisable working-band songs of the 21st century.
For guitarists, Amy’s music is a goldmine. You can study the Jazz influence in Frank. You can dig into the Soul and Motown references on Back to Black.
You can learn how borrowed musical ideas can become something completely new. And you can practise the most important lesson of all: learn the song, but learn the feel too.
Amy wasn’t great because she had complicated chords. She was great because she knew exactly how she wanted a song to sound.
That’s why, more than a decade after her death, her relatively small catalogue still gives musicians plenty to learn. And perhaps that’s the frustrating part.
Two albums were enough to establish Amy Winehouse as one of the most distinctive voices of her generation. Imagine what she might have done with another ten years.
Amy Winehouse Tunes | Related Pages
I Heard It Through The Grapevine | Marvin Gaye
You can learn I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye using chords, lyrics, backing tracks, a chord chart, TAB, and video guitar lessons.
| Ebm | Ebm | Bb Ab | Ab6 Ab |
I bet you’re wonderin’ how I knew, ’bout your plans to make me blue…
Check it out how the verse is taught in the course for FREE here: I Heard It Through The Grapevine | Guitar Lesson – Step 2.
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus | Chords + TAB
Learn to play I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by The Ronettes using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, TAB, and backing tracks.
| A | A | C#m | F#m |
I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus…
Valerie | Chords + TAB
You can learn how to play Valerie by Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, TAB, and backing tracks.
| Eb5 | Eb5 | F5 | F5 |
Well sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water…
Amy Winehouse on the web
