Part 2 of 11

I’ll never forget the year I got my first place. I wrote about it several times in the Bachelor Chronicles several years ago. I was in my early 30s but had gotten quite a bit of life experience. It was weird that I had been through so much in my life up until that point yet there I stood in my very plain, very brown townhouse, a man in his 30s living on his own for the first time in his life. I had big plans for the new place (that ultimately never panned out) but one of my first rules was television is not allowed. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with TV for the last 20 years, which I realize is ironic since I’ve worked in television for nearly the same amount of time. Instead of a flat screen idiot box heading up my living room, the focal point for entertainment would be my record player and the magic it produces.

Make no mistake, my record player set up was/is janky at best. My turntable is a high-quality table that I inherited from an old widowed friend’s late husband’s estate. It has a single cable that runs out the back and splits into stereo RCA outputs. Those outputs are securely fastened to the input-jack on a $30 preamp I hastily bought on Amazon once I learned I needed one. The preamp’s output jack is also RCA and that cable runs to an old three-disc CD changer with bass-boost feature and two very loud, very booming speakers I’ve had since I was a teenager. In those townhouse days, this whole operation with its many moving parts and dangling cables was stacked and arranged atop a full, wooden console record player I had purchased at a vintage store five years prior that no longer worked.

Once I had all of my stereo equipment in one place, I plugged it all in and stood there with an old friend who helped me move and my heart fluttered when I put on the townhouse’s first record:

2) Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

Released October 27, 2006; Produced by Mark Ronson & Salaam Remi

I admit that I didn’t get into Amy right away. By the time Back to Black’s lead single “Rehab” hit the airwaves, she’d already established herself as a prolific Jazz singer in the UK and had released a powerhouse multi-award-winning debut, Frank, in 2003 that went Gold in nine countries, Platinum in three and Triple-Platinum in the UK. When her song about refusing to go to rehab made her a breakout star in the US, I heard the song but initially dismissed it.

It wasn’t until 2007 when follow-up single “You Know I’m No Good” came out that she got my attention. Is it Jazz? Is it Soul? Is it Blues? Is it Hip-Hop? And who is this woman that’s singing? She’s STUNNING. I was smitten from that moment on. I immediately went out and bought the CD (and later the record on vinyl) and never looked back.

Before production started on the record, Amy had re-fallen in love with classic Motown artists and the girl groups of the 60s. Her creativity was fertile but she wasn’t surrounding herself with the best people. It was during this time she began to drink heavily, using a variety of drugs and becoming dangerously thin due to her bulimia. She would hit an emotional low when, after grounding herself firmly in her addictions, the love of her life, Blake Fielder-Civil, left her for his ex-girlfriend. It was in this fragile, heartbroken and substance-fueled state that she wrote the majority of what would become Back to Black.

Amy was joined in the studio with the Dap-Kings as her backing band and producer Mark Ronson (of “Uptown Funk” fame and known for working with Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Queens of the Stone Age and Lily Allen among others). Amy wrote her lyrics and proceeded to bleed all over the melodies. Her songs of loss, heartbreak, tragedy and even drug use can sometimes be emotionally crushing. Her unique, soulful voice breathes a forlorn energy into the words in a way that can never be replicated.

Strong Points

Me and Mr. Jones

A jazzy song about a hip-hop artist, “Me and Mr. Jones” laments missing a Slick Rick concert while informing the song’s unnamed antagonist that “nobody stands between” her and Nas (real name Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones) so she will be attending his show regardless of what they think of it. The song has a hint of Reggae in the tempo and a lot of Amy’s bratty attitude that I love so much. The fact that a Jazz singer of her calibur was ballsy enough to use the word fuckery in such a pleasant way is a very punk rock thing to do and, reportedly, she even tried to name the song “Fuckery,” much to the dismay of Island Records president Darcus Beese.

Tears Dry on Their Own

With a sample of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (1967, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell), “Tears Dry on Their Own” kicks off an upbeat tempo that just feels good. The jovial track, however, is juxtaposed against Amy’s quasi-self-deprecating lyrics about a recent breakup (no doubt with the aforementioned Blake) painting an accurate picture of what it’s like to go through such a tumultuous time while trying to act positive. The highlight of this track is the lyric in verse two: “I cannot play myself again, I should just be my own best friend; not fuck myself in the head with stupid men.”

He Can Only Hold Her

A chill Hip-Hop beat holds up “He Can Only Hold Her” — a fine Jazz tune complete with horn section and sampling of the Icemen’s “(My Girl) She’s a Fox.” The song’s dissociative theme plays right into the overarching style of the entire record – loving someone who doesn’t love you back, loving someone while being in the arms of another, etc. My favorite part of this song, however, comes from the nod to the Icemen with the background harmonies in the chorus.

Favorite Songs

You Know I’m No Good

This is one of my all-time favorite songs. It’s soulful, it’s sultry, it’s sexy. It also takes an opposite approach of the classic “You’re Cheating Heart” trope in that it’s a song about the cheater from their point of view – and they’re seemingly helpless against their desires. She knows she’s doing something bad but she simply cannot help herself. It’s hard, however, to hear that soulful, almost pouty, voice talk about being no good when the very sound of it makes you refuse to believe it. In a weird way, as a straight male with a crush on Amy, I can’t help but condone the toxic behavior as I tend to forgive her every single time.

Love is a Losing Game

Musically stripped down, this ballad’s main feature is Amy’s wistful voice as she laments the reality that falling in love, like gambling, is a game we play that is likely to end in loss. The Deluxe Edition of the record includes an even more naked version of the track sang by Amy alone as she strums her guitar. At the conclusion of the song, she asks the engineer if it was a “good take.” I can’t help but think Amy Winehouse wasn’t capable of a bad one.

Back to Black

Amy’s affinity for those 60s girl groups is evident on the title track and again, we see lyrics that directly reference her recently broken relationship with her Blake. Musically the song was written by Ronson and I absolutely love the aggressive beat and piano riff. Reportedly Ronson was not a fan of Amy’s lack of rhyme as the chorus begins “We only said goodbye with words, I died a hundred times.” In true Amy fashion, she refused to see the problem in her perfection and the lyrics remained in poetic defiance. Beautiful though the song may be, I can’t help but feel great anger toward Blake for ever making her feel the way she did, even though being away from her was the best thing he could have ever done.

Overall, Back to Black introduced me to a voice that I’ll never get tired of. When it comes to art of all forms, I have a tendency to roam when I get bored yet I’ve never once ventured away from this particular voice. It moves me so much that I proudly got an Amy Winehouse portrait tattooed on my left forearm and I get defensive anytime someone chooses to highlight Amy’s struggles with addiction over her contribution to music. She hurt in ways no one can ever imagine and I hate that she’s gone but I’ll forever hold her name on a pedestal as one of the greatest to ever sing and perform.

Back to Black and its singles won a mountain of awards including:

• Best British Female Solo Artist (2007 BRIT Awards)
• Best International Female Artist – Rock/Pop and Album of the Year (2009 Echo Music Awards)
• Best Foreign Female Act (2007 GAFFA Awards)
• Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (2008 Grammy Awards)
• Best Contemporary Song (2007 Ivor Novello Awards)
• Best Song Musically and Lyrically (2008 Ivor Novello Awards)
• Best International Female (2008 Meteor Music Awards)
• Best UK Female (2007 MOBO Awards)
• Song of the Year (2007 MOJO Awards)
• Artist’s Choice (2007 MTV Europe Music Awards)
• Best British Pop Single of the Year (2007 Popjustice £20 Music Prize)
• Best Album (2007 Q Awards)
• Best Neo-Soul Act (Urban Music Awards)
• Best Female (Vodafone Live Music Awards)
• Best Selling Pop/Rock Female (2008 World Music Awards).

The album has sold over 16,000,000 copies worldwide and has been on rotation in my house for 16 years now. There aren’t too many other records that can say that. Come to think of it, Amy said a lot of things nobody else could.