A twenty-something co-worker of mine recently let slip that her go-to karaoke selections are the hits of Amy Winehouse. “Those songs come on and instantly everyone freaks out,” she said. I asked why she thought they still hit so hard. “Mainly it’s the attitude and sass,” she explained, adding “I don’t want to say her songs are considered throwback at this point—they absolutely are not—I just think she had a James Dean quality to her, in that there was no one like her and no voice like hers.” Ten years ago today, Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27, a wretched ending to a life of brilliant highs and too-well-chronicled calamity. But as my friend’s karaoke choices illustrate, a decade later, Winehouse still occupies a strong place in the public imagination, and remains a singular and transformative figure in pop music. At the 2019 Glastonbury festival, Miley Cyrus covered “Back to Black” (the title track to Winehouse’s magnificent 2006 album that has sold sixteen million copies worldwide and won five Grammy Awards), while Lana del Rey recently said that she considered quitting music following Winehouse’s death.The anniversary is being marked with numerous projects and products. Most notably, despite (or because of) the Oscar-winning success of the comprehensive 2015 documentary Amy, there are no less than three new films exam… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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Why Amy Winehouse Endures
