10 Years With/Without Amy Winehouse
/10 years and 1 week ago I had still not given Amy Winehouse a chance.
Everything I had seen or heard of her up until then had been just stray, involuntary glimpses. Whether it be tabloid drama or a catchy song about going to rehab that seemed to reciprocate said drama, Amy took up a small part of my subconscious for much of the time that she was alive. It was a space usually reserved for the likes of celebrity feuds and annoying memes. You (think you) know I'm no good. You have no idea.
That I only decided to actually acquire & play her Grammy Award-winning second album, 2011’s Back To Black, in full for the first time just days before her final frame is a cruel fate to which I have resigned for this past decade.
I became a fan at the 11th hour, showing up late to the party after years of indifference but suddenly happy to hear more please.
So on this day 10 years ago I headed out to a wine festival (where else but in this definitely-not-made-up story…)
I set out with plans of putting Amy's 2003 debut album Frank on tomorrow's Sunday-chores playlist. I came home devastated that it would now be in memoriam. Girl to ghost. He could (barely) hold her.
But I held onto the magnificent music she left behind and soon gained a much fuller portrait of this troubled yet terrific artist (she was full o’wit too). Although she sang like a jazz diva, Amy carried herself like a punk rocker and was not afraid to speak her mind in song: breezily, beautifully, brutally.
For years I tried to atone for my earlier apathy. I hunted down as many b-sides and covers collections from her painfully-short career as I could get my ears towards; desperately grasping for a supply that I knew would be frustratingly fixed forever. She even soundtracked one of life's proudest days, with me and my wife cutting our wedding cake to the romantic reggae rhythms of 'Our Day Will Come'.
My journey as an Amy Winehouse fan has taught me that love may be forever but life is fleeting so...
"I gotta know you now
We may never meet again
I gotta know you now and then"
We've got my whole lifetime ahead, Amy
And on a day like today
My tears don't dry on their own
Credit for Amy Winehouse photo: Fionn Kidney, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr