20 years ago, Amy Winehouse released her debut album 'Frank.' It’s the closest we’ll ever get to knowing what she was like before fame.
Winehouse's debut album is the closest we’ll ever get to knowing what she was like before fame, before her death became greater than her life.I don’t want to watch Amy Winehouse die again. Whether intended as a revisionist reappraisal or a lesson on the consequences of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Winehouse’s premature and tragic demise has perpetually been rebroadcast and commercialized since her actual death in 2011.
Instead of watching some Hollywood bigwig’s translation, you can listen to her unfiltered memoir. Like a flashback in a movie,paints a sunny picture. Winehouse is 19 with long, combed hair, a wide smile and full cheeks. Both she and the music are less complicated, less jaded. It’s the closest we’ll ever get to knowing what Winehouse was like before fame and it’s been here all along, for 20 whole years—and it begins with a scat.
But she is not above self-criticism; she can point the finger back at herself with the same extremity, if not more so. On “Amy, Amy, Amy,” she recounts a illicit relationship with her Diesel jeans-wearing science teacher. She walks past his desk in heels just to “show him how it feels,” admitting her “weakness for the other sex” causes her to fantasize and distract her from her writing. In between the seductive verses, you can hear her scolding herself.
Winehouse’s success grew in tandem with her addiction, as well as the rise of celebrity gossip magazines and websites. Paparazzi would park outside of her house, drooling over themselves for a compromising picture. You couldn’t walk into a CVS or a grocery store and avoid the bold yellow lettering documenting every step of her destruction:For Winehouse, the limelight was luminous and all her blood, sweat and tears were extracted and served to the masses as a mere joke.
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