There is a look in the eye of Amy Winehouse when she performs. It is unmistakable. Her hair, her wardrobe, her makeup, will all be perfect. Her body language, perhaps, will be a little wobbly. Her voice will be strong but she may well forget the words to the song she's singing, or slur them.
Her eyes, though. Her eyes are not only clear, they are wide open. Anyone who watches closely can see the truth behind those eyes.
Amy Winehouse is petrified.
*
Once upon a time, there was a British singer who was pretty, talented, and raised on jazz classics. She had a cockney accent and she liked to drink.
She recorded an album,
Frank, that was a huge hit in her native UK. Its music was based in jazz, with elements of hip-hop and modern R&B added for extra flavor. It was in the aftermath of this success that the Winehouse reputation began to flower. She started showing up to shows too drunk to sing. She started a ruinous affair that would later be chronicled in excruciating lyrical detail. Her managers tried to get her to clean up. Instead, she wrote a catchy little song about it. It was called "Rehab" and would lead off her next album.
She paired up with a producer who added hand claps, piano, and other retro stylings to the mix. Winehouse was positioned as a throwback, a white girl who sings like a black girl.
In the early pressings of her follow-up album and US breakthrough,
Back to Black, which leads off with "Rehab," Winehouse appears in her "old" guise, as a pretty, curvy girl with pretty brown curls and subtle make-up. She looks classy. She looks real.
Once "Rehab" became a hit, however, someone redesigned the cover of
Back to Black to reflect Winehouse's newly revamped image: thinner, bigger hair, eyeliner for days. This is the iconic look that she sports today. She never appears in public otherwise -- even when she is wearing dirty ballet slippers, with bruises peppered along her arms, her eyeliner is on in perfect wings around her eyes. Her hairpiece may be ratty and crooked, but it's still in place.
Winehouse's look is meant to evoke an era, but also a specific artist: Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes. Amy Winehouse could have torn the huge signature beehive she now wears right off of Spector's head, or perhaps nicked it from her closet. Like Winehouse, Spector came from a lower class background. She had a reputation as a tough girl, a bad girl. She had attitude. The Ronettes' skirts were shorter, their hair was higher, and their eyeliner thicker than anyone who had come before. You could hear the accent in Spector's songs. Her voice was coarser, darker than her girl-pop peers.
Ronnie Spector (nee Bennett) also had one of the most closely stage-managed careers ever. It ended with her marrying her producer, the legendary (and legendarily insane) Phil Spector. Once they were wed, he kept her under nearly literal lock and key. He barely allowed her to leave the house, much less attend a recording session.
The two cover designs for
Back to Black are similar enough -- black on black, same font, same layout. In fact, there's really only one difference. In the old printings, Winehouse's pictures appear only on the interior; in the new version, she's made the cover.
The difference between the two Winehouses is enough that people who aren't "in the know" often do not recognize the curvy jazz singer of
Frank as the same person who sings on
Back to Black She has remade herself completely.
It was the old Winehouse that recorded
Back to Black, but it's her new face that is being used to sell it.
*
Amy Winehouse writes her own lyrics.
This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Listen to
Back to Black carefully, and you will notice that certain images are recycled through the songs until they are not so much a motif as a cliche: "my tears dry on their own" is only the most obvious of these stock phrases; the mood "black" is another.
Nonetheless, she is not a prefab pop star. Her music has the richly produced sound of someone who's essentially a hired gun, a nightingale, a mockingbird. Her visual image is carefully crafted, cartoonish, flat. In live performances, her (black, male) backup singers shimmy through a series of highly choreographed Motown-esque moves. And then she opens her mouth to sing, and the audience holds their breath.
*
Amy Winehouse is petrified of performing live. You can see it in those wide doe eyes. The fear that alcohol (known), heroin and cocaine (rumored) -- none of these can conquer. She looks ready to bolt at any moment. Not just at the beginning of her songs, but all the way through the performance.
She's been quoted as saying, "the more insecure I feel, the bigger my hair has to be.”
Tabloids follow her every move offstage. She is a fixture in celebrity gossip columns and photoblogs. She responds with an incousiant "fuck-you" attitude to this sort of attention. But put her up in front of a cheering crowd, and watch her eyes. Amy Winehouse has a massive case of stage fright. Every time she steps on-stage, she is trapped -- and terrified.
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cindymonkey, edited slightly)