Amy Winehouse joins the 27 Club

Yes, this news ruined my day. I really respected Amy and her talents. RIP Amy.

 

Sad, however like we didn't see this train wreck coming!!!

 

while her death is tragic, i really haven't given it a second thought. she chose this path, refused to be helped (even wrote a song about refusing it) and basically killed herself. It is a shame that she wasted her talent, but I will not mourn what amounts to be a drawn-out suicide.

 

they told me go rehab I said no no no

 

She lasted longer than I thought she would

 

You need not mourn her passing... She got what she wanted, the way she wanted to do it... I did enjoy some of her tunes, and she did have a voice that could capture an audience when she wasn't loaded... she was an addict... and addicts usually meet their maker before their time.

 

It shouldn't matter but what bugs me the most is that these people waste their lives. I fight every day to stay alive so it irritates me that people indulge in drugs and alcohol to such an extent that they are basically useless in societal terms. I know it shouldn't bother me because it is their life and they can do what they want but wasting life just seems so wrong.

 

Sad, but the fact is all these "talented" entertainers are drug addicts, their creativity are created with drugs, without the drugs they are just ordinary people. That's why none of them can quit and they don't want to quit in order to be successful.

 

Come on, you guys act like this is news.

Like it wasn't a given...........

 

On The Onion's Facebook page (but not their website, for some reason) ran the headline "NEWSWIRE: London Pawn Shop Returns Amy Winehouse’s Grammy Awards Out Of Respect"

 

I think that's too broad a brush to paint a whole industry with. Although many entertainers trade on their looks, most have at least some sort of talent, or they wouldn't have become popular in the first place. Given way too much time, not enough responsibilities, a culture of poor behaviour, and waaaay too much money, drug problems are pretty much inevitable. There may well be some sort of emptiness in their lives they're trying to fill with fame and cocaine, but to say the altered states create the creativity is a stretch.

 

Could Ms Winehouse have died from a lack of alcohol? It sounds crazy, and it's not the cause of death just about everyone has already assumed, but it seems sudden abstinence can be lethal. Apparently Amy Winehouse went cold turkey three weeks ago, against the advice of her doctor, and warnings are now being issued about the health risks of detox.

 

Not true at all. What actually happens is that a person suddenly hits it big and for the first time in their life they have lots of money and access to drugs. Not everyone succumbs. But someone in their teens or early 20's is not always mature enough to make healthy decisions. There's a very high fatality rate in the first 5 years after a young person becomes suddenly rich and famous.

And as Hyo points out, sudden withdrawl from a severe alcohol addiction can be and often is fatal. It's in the nature of addiction that your body needs the drug in order to function.

I never knew who Amy Winehouse was when she was alive. I only discovered her two days ago, after Chuck posted the YouTube video of "Rehab" in reply to the video of the nononono cat. She had a truly amazing voice, and several of her songs will be classics. Three that I've found so far are Rehab (which Chuck posted and then removed, and I re-posted in the cat thread), Back to Black, and I'm No Good.

These songs combine elements of R&B, Motown, and Dixieland jazz. In particular I like the polyphony (present in Dixieland) and the way her voice dances around the instrumental in a sort of counterpoint. I hear a hint of Motown in an occasional moment of the instrumentals.

Her battle with addiction is sad, and is even more tragic if, as Hyo wonders, it was actually her attempt to stop drinking that killed her. She may have been making a real attempt to turn her life around.

Addiction is a disease, not a moral shortcoming. We lost a truly great musical talent.

 

Wait 'til you discover Adele - and she has the advantage that she's still alive.

 

Aye, she is very talented!

 

Body and Soul...

 

She has a beautiful voice and great talent. But that song has none of the musical complexity of the Amy Winehouse songs I posted above. A beautiful voice singing a nice tune (Adele) vs. a spectacular voice singing a musically complex piece with real substance.

I may be in a minority, but I like Dixieland because of the interplay of multiple independent and equally important lines, rather than merely melody and accompaniment. I.e. polyphony. The same sort of musical interplay that existed in much Baroque music, but which fell out of favor in the Classical and Romantic periods, and then resurfaced briefly in New Orleans jazz, only to fade away again by the time rock & roll hit the scene.

I listened to a bunch of Winehouse songs on YouTube, and the three I posted were the only ones I stumbled upon that have this quality, but it sets her apart from any other modern popular musician that I am aware of. (Granted, I know almost no popular musicians, mainly because, by and large, the genre is devoid of musical substance. Just tunes, sometimes nice ones, and untrained, if often pretty voices. To really captivate me, music must be more complex than just a beat and a melody. It's the quality that makes J.S. Bach the greatest of all composers.