Amy Winehouse: A Ten Year Tribute To The Singer

Amy Winehouse died on 23^rd July 2011 aged 27. Remembered for her unique voice, brutally honest lyricism, as well as her personal struggles, there have been many tributes to the late singer on the tenth anniversary of her passing.

Amy’s career

Amy Winehouse was an accomplished singer, writer and performer. Her first performance on Later… With Jools Holland saw the young singer play the track Stronger Than Me from her debut album Frank. Looking confident, healthy, and supporting herself impeccably on the guitar, her talent and ability is apparent from the outset.

Perhaps it was the collaboration with producer Mark Ronson on the album Back To Black that really catapulted Amy into the musical stratosphere. It’s easy to forget just how huge this album was at the time, and how well it has aged subsequently.

Amy continued to collaborate and create prior to her early passing, despite publicly struggling with her relationships and addiction issues during her last years. Although the media coverage at that time was largely focused on her personal life, the music Amy created in that difficult period was undoubtedly still of a phenomenal quality, and she will be remembered for her moving duet with the legendary Tony Bennett amongst others.

10 years since Amy’s passing

The anniversary of the loss is felt particularly hard in the British music scene at present, with the BBC leading the way in a series of touching tributes and television programmes. They have aired several documentaries, including a celebration of her life, as well as looking at the issues she faced in her life and career. One notable programme is centred around not only her legacy, but also asks the questions of whether anything has changed within the industry in the last ten years, looking at how we treat those in music and entertainment.

“A decade on from Amy Winehouse’s death, musicians Estelle, Mutya Buena, Ray BLK and Wendy James reflect on her life, legacy and the how they inspired them. Her phenomenal voice won her Grammys and a Brit, but the pressures that came with the fame often looked too much for her.

Hounded by the media, her spiral into addiction was cruelly and regularly laid bare as tabloid fodder. Would it be any different for a singer of her calibre now? Newsnight’s Katie Razzall speaks to four female artists, who reflect on Amy Winehouse’s life and legacy and the impact she had on them.

Singer-songwriter Estelle and the Sugarbabes’ Mutya Buena, who both knew Amy Winehouse personally, share their memories alongside former Transvision Vamp band member Wendy James and Ray BLK, who won the BBC’s Sound of 2017.”

Unreleased tracks

There will allegedly be two new posthumous albums coming in the future, titled Lioness and Amy. While her record label had previously said that any unfinished demos had been destroyed in order to prevent people exploiting them, Amy’s father, Mitch Winehouse has said that the family hope to release some recordings, of which they now own the rights. Speaking to the BBC, Mitch said:

“We’ve found a few bits and pieces but it’s difficult because the CDs are a bit corrupted, but apparently we’ve been told we might be able to rescue something. It might not be as good as Back To Black, but from what I’ve heard, from the snippets that we might be able to rescue, it’s good. To me, I want to hear all this stuff and I want Amy’s fans to hear all this stuff so they can see she started there and she ended up here.”

Amid the constant controversy of her parents input both before and since her death, Amy’s mum, Janis and Dad Mitch have been part of making another BBC documentary to mark the 10^th anniversary. They publicly address these controversial elements for the first time, sharing a deeper insight into the real Amy Winehouse with the help of those who knew her best. Ten years on, Amy is still missed by music fans everywhere.

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