Remembering Amy Winehouse

Lioness: Hidden Treasures is the final album by the tragic Amy Winehouse. She was found dead last year in her London home from drug and alcohol abuse at the very young age of 27.

It is not really her best. The contents are uneven with her vocals going from youthful clarity to a drunken slur.

Amy in this CD seems like an artist who is a work in progress, a singer still in search of what she should be. Here is Amy singing bossa nova, Jobim’s Girl From Ipanema; reggae, Our Day Will Come; ’60s pop, the Gerry Goffin and Carole King classic Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Even Body And Soul, her recording with Tony Bennett for his Duets II album, is included.

It is obvious that this was a hurried production that was put together to take advantage of the massive outpouring of grief that accompanied the news of Amy’s death last July. There are new recordings made for her third album, outtakes from her previous two CDs, Frank and Back To Black and a cut from a live set. It is not much and unless there is some cache of unheard of recordings stashed somewhere that might be discovered in the future, this could be the last we will ever hear from Amy.

I take back those words “take advantage.” As with what usually happens when a pop star dies suddenly, of questionable circumstances, sales of the Amy recordings soared through the roof. But I do not think that the producers behind Hidden Treasures came out with this album just for the money. Amy had a voice that should be heard as often as possible and releasing these tracks is the only way to have that.

Amy was phenomenal. She opened the door. Do you think we would have Adele today, if not for Amy? No chance. She brought singing back and brought life back to the moribund music industry. She got people to listen again to female sounds from the UK. She was actually the first girl singer in many years, who could weave magic just by her no frills, no new-fangled effects vocals. That singer, a modern-day heiress to Judy Garland and Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James and Dinah Washington and those other greats, is what you get in Hidden Treasures.

I like listening to the CD and her originals. Amy is also an adept songwriter. Take note of the way she approaches the promise of forever love in the doo-wop tune Between The Cheats. Others might have said “I will love you forever.” But Amy goes, “I would die before I divorce ya/ I’d take a thousand thumps for my love.” Hearing these lines makes me wonder what other songs she might have written for the album.

I also think of what she was thinking while doing the CD and how her producers Mark Ronson and SaLaAM ReMi would have finished the tracks had Amy been around to complete her third album. Will hip-hop fit into the line-up? Like Smoke featuring Nas. What about the beat of Motown pop used in Valerie? Maybe some swinging jazz as in Half-Time. Would she have allowed the emotional rocker A Song For You to make the final cut? It is flawed but is the definite must-have in this posthumous collection.

It is a sad closer. You can tell that her voice was starting to go. Maybe it was kinder that she left before that happened or we would have been witnesses to another talent ruined by substance abuse. The way things stand as of now, Amy Winehouse has become a legend. She is a new standard by which many newcomers would be measured.

I read last week in the papers that the famous French designer Jean Paul Gaultier has derived inspiration for his new collection from Amy. His models walked the runway to the tune of Amy’s big hit Rehab. They were clad in corsets, sleeveless tops and pencil skirts and wore beehive hairdos and thick black eye make-up. Watch girls from everywhere get into the fad. We will look at them and remember Amy.

We will always remember Amy.