{"id":676,"date":"2007-07-02T13:55:52","date_gmt":"2007-07-02T17:55:52","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-07-24T14:31:14","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T18:31:14","slug":"once-in-love-with-amy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/once-in-love-with-amy\/","title":{"rendered":"Once in Love with Amy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Designed for “comeback”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Townsman Saturnismine sent in the following thoughts and asks the Hall for its advice.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Thankfully, every now and then, the Great Big Music Machine in the Sky<\/strong> spits something out that\u2019s flawed, irregular, maybe not even likable, but possessing qualities so intriguing that we can\u2019t look away, even if we sense tragedy in the final frame. This time it\u2019s a British soul Jewess named Amy Winehouse<\/strong>. She\u2019s a one woman freakshow of mixed signifiers, a completely \u201chot mess\u201d if you will: big hair, tattoos<\/a>, a seemingly authentic \u201cother woman\u201d persona, a fine pair of husky pipes, and a feel for vocal phrasing so subtle that the utterance of a single note can make this Townsman feel connected to the Universal life force at its very source.<\/p>\n

Just as the Summer of \u201906 was The Summer of (Gnarles Barkley\u2019s) \u201cCrazy\u201d<\/strong>, Summer \u201807 may very well go down in pop annals as \u201cRehab\u201d Summer<\/strong>. If you haven\u2019t heard this neo-Ray Charles handclapper in the supermarket, the Laundromat, or while waiting for Sethro Baer to fix your teeth, then you live under a rock. For cryin\u2019 out loud, this is the song that made my mother teach herself how to download music from iTunes<\/a><\/strong>. For those of you who haven\u2019t heard \u201cRehab\u201d<\/a><\/strong> (from Winehouse\u2019s late 2006 release Back to Black<\/em>), take a listen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice to hear a distinctive voice interpreting and performing a song. It\u2019s also a pleasure to hear some thoughtful production that manages to sound new (without embracing studio-by-numbers, Sam Ash<\/a><\/strong> trends) while at the same time sounding vintage.<\/p>\n

If we dig deeper into Back to Black<\/em>, we find everything \u201cRehab\u201d promises – and more: lyrics with intelligent word play that doesn\u2019t obscure meaning; nuanced, but never labored sounding vocals on every track. But perhaps most impressive is that Amy wrote the songs. We hear an in-depth tutorial in the \u201cisms\u201d of Billie Holliday<\/strong>, Spector\u2019s girl-groups, Motown, Memphis<\/strong>, Aretha, and Amy\u2019s British girl forebear in the pursuit of Americanness, Dusty Springfield<\/strong>. Somehow, we also hear more than a few fucked-up-isms stolen from the bottom of Rickie Lee Jones<\/strong>\u2019 bag of tricks. But Amy hasn\u2019t just skimmed the surface in order to graft this or that move from her idols. She\u2019s inspired. She \u201cwalks with\u201d her idols rather than looking up to them. One imagines that she\u2019s been listening to the stuff (and nothing but this stuff) and singing along all her life.<\/p>\n

The combination of sadness and bounce in \u201cMe & Mr. Jones\u201d<\/a><\/strong> is so evocative of a post-war\/pre-Beatles past that it automatically conjures images of too much lipstick, cat glasses, and grainy 8-mm movies of children in footy pajamas around Christmas trees spliced with, oh, I dunno\u2026equally grainy footage of JFK\u2019s head splattering all over Jackie O\u2019s pink coat<\/strong>. But what really make \u201cMe & Mr. Jones\u201d special are little moments like the one at 0:20<\/strong>. Check how Amy drops her throat into her heels to sing the words \u201cSlick Rick gig.\u201d If we suspected, before this utterance, that we were listening to the bitch offspring of Ma Rainey<\/strong>, Billie, and Ronnie, we\u2019re sure of it by 0:26.<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s crowning jewel is \u201cLove is a Losing Game\u201d<\/a><\/strong>, a pungent chunk of turf from Nelson Riddle\u2019s backyard<\/strong>, featuring a devastating, harsh, but vulnerable and hesitating vocal. At 0:46<\/strong>, Amy tosses the word \u201clove\u201d across a sea of strings with a sad carelessness rarely mustered by singers in any era. Effortlessly, she has shared with us an exceedingly private moment, when she has mournfully, but absentmindedly thrown something into the dustbin that was once more important to her than anything else in the whole world; heartbreaks have turned love into a trifle that has been gathering dust on the mantle, something obsolete that needs tossing before it becomes a problem again.<\/p>\n

Choose any moment to focus on her voice, you\u2019ll find stuff like this. Back to Black<\/em> is an ocean full of treasures buried beneath the gravel at the bottom of the sea.<\/p>\n

And if there\u2019s any question as to whether or not Amy can bring this kind of heat live, search Youtube for her Letterman<\/strong> performance, or check this one: a cracked, yet powerful reading of \u201cRehab\u201d\u2026<\/p>