Remembering Amy Winehouse Three Years On
Read our tribute to the iconic singer
It’s three years to the day since the untimely death of one of the greatest musical talents the UK has ever produced – Amy Winehouse.
Although she only released two studio albums in her all-too-brief 27 years on the planet, Amy changed the pop landscape forever thanks to her unique, naturally soulful voice and timeless retro-influenced anthems.
Amy’s first foray into the music world came in 2003 with her critically acclaimed debut album ‘Frank’.
A benchmark of things to come, the jazz influenced record was an intensely personal tour-de-force largely inspired by a heart-breaking split with a lover.
The album won Amy a coveted Ivor Novello award and a Mercury Prize nomination and provided the platform for massive shows at Glastonbury, Montreal International Jazz Festival, V Festival and more.
Despite all these early successes it was her second and final album, October 2006’s ‘Back To Black’, that truly propelled Amy in global superstardom.
Taking influence from 1950s and 1960s soul groups, Amy joined forces with producer and kindred spirit Mark Ronson to create perfect musical alchemy.
Packed with enduring pop masterpieces like ‘Rehab’, ‘You Know I’m No Good’, the album title track and the incredibly emotional ‘Love Is A Losing Game’, the album was an instant classic and was showered with praise from fans and critics alike.
A gargantuan commercial success, ‘Back To Black’ is the second best selling album of the Millennium in the UK (behind Adele’s ‘21’) with 3.5million sales and has shifted over 20million copies worldwide.
The album won Amy five prestigious Grammy Awards including the "Big Four" awards: Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
For all these musical peaks, sadly Amy’s latter years were largely lived out in the tabloid press and gossip magazines as she spiralled into drug and alcohol addiction.
Despite receiving treatment for her addictions and even locating to the Caribbean briefly, on 23rd July 2011 Amy tragically died from alcohol poisoning at her home in Camden, North London.
However, as many people have written on Twitter today, it’s Amy’s music that we really should remember her by.
Check out some tributes written by her fans today: