Why Amy Winehouse Is A Genuine Loss To Art

When Amy Winehouse passed away on Saturday and became the latest musician to join the “27 Club” (alongside Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Dave Alexander of the Stooges and Kurt Cobain), the news spread fast but nobody outside of her family and friends seemed to be particularly shocked. Winehouse's issues with drugs and alcohol have been well documented. There's nothing the tabloid media likes to do more than build a celebrity up and then knock them down, documenting the filth and the gory details with voyeuristic glee. Youtube, too, is full of clips showing Winehouse stumbling across the stage during a show. Sadly, she never received the help that she so badly needed. Anybody that has ever known an addict, be it drugs, alcohol, gambling or anything else, knows that the only person that can really help an addict is the addict. You can't tell a junkie to quit and you can't tell an alcoholic to stop drinking. They have to be ready. However, when a person is in the public eye like Winehouse was (we can just say “celebrity”, even though it is a horrible word), they will find themselves surrounded by sycophants and enablers – people that enjoy the feeling of self-importance brought on by a myth of “cool by association”. These people will nod and smile from their front row view of carnage and destruction, because they get to be backstage or part of an entourage. If that sounds pathetic, it is. Of course, there will be plenty of ignorant people who will say words to the effect of, “I don't feel sorry for Amy Winehouse. She did it to herself”. Those people don't know anything. Only Amy Winehouse could have helped Amy Winehouse, but she didn't ask to be an addict. Most of us are blessed with a mind that knows when to stop. We can have two beers, three maybe, and then happily go home. The mind of an alcoholic isn't built like that. There's only “no beer” or “all the beer”. There's no in-between. If that doesn't make sense to you, that's because you are not an addict and you, and I, should feel very grateful about that. Jokes about how Winehouse didn't go to “Rehab (No, No, No)” are understandable, but they are not so much funny as spookily prophetic. Tragically, Winehouse never got on top of her disease. It controlled her for the majority of her short life, right up until the very end. When any young person dies, it is especially horrible. Amy Winehouse's death will be felt for decades to come though because, rather than being a loss to music, she's a loss to art and the concept of artistic freedom in the mainstream world. Winehouse won five Grammys and three Ivor Novello awards, among many others. She sold thousands of records and was immensely popular at the time of her death. She didn't achieve this success, as most do, by riding on a wave of fashion and fads. She became commercially huge singing jazz. No gimmicks – she seamlessly blended old R&B with the music of jazz crooners and came up with something that sounded simultaneously fresh and classic. You can like her music or loathe it, but you have to admire the fact that she achieved what she did without compromise. That is incredibly rare in these days of identikit pop pap. The Katy Perrys and the Miley Cyrus' will come and go with different faces and different names, but there will only ever be one Amy Winehouse. And she will be missed.