Amy Winehouse

Back to Black

(Island)

Record Review by Sarah Jane

If Amy Winehouse - instead of Leslie Hunt - had scatted Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” on week two of American Idol, we would have texted the word “Vote.” The bourgeois Jewish girl (though she only dates shgatzim) from Enfield’s real-life Dreamgirls drama (diagnosed manic-depression, bulimorexic, heavy drinking) is tabloid fodder for the British US Weeklys. And her fandom of mid-century girl groups, so evident in Back to Black, shares the tearstained Dear Diary prose of the Shangri-Las’ “I Can Never Go Home Anymore.”

Winehouse left American Idol’s super management company 19 Entertainment after, as Winehouse explains, “They tried to make me go to rehab (I go no, no, no - I’d rather be at home with Ray (Charles)” – her “no, no, no’s” straight out of the Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walking In The Sand)”. Stylistically, “Rehab” also works as a Ronettes behind the scenes drama between Ronnie and her husband/producer/alleged killer Phil Spector - blending pure ‘60s girl group pop, Wall of Sound, and the modernity of rehab in polite conversation; the kind of song that drives Timothy Price and Brian Wilson crizazy.

Preferring The Mashed Potato-inducing throwbacks (“Me & Mr. Jones,” “Rehab,” “Back To Black,” “Wake Up Alone,” “He Can Only Hold Her”), over the MTV Jams (“You Know I’m No Good,” “Tears Dry On Their Own,” “Some Unholy War”) or Smooth Jazz tracks (“Just Friends” and “Love Is A Losing Game”), the jazz orchestra instrumentals are unreal with Goldfinger-style glamour. “He Can Only Hold Her” is a Motown cross between “You Really Got A Hold On Me” and Method Man & Mary J. Blige’s “I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By,” while the title track is Winehouse’s “I (Who Have Nothing)”. “Me & Mr. Jones” is a mannered, elegant take on Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones” and “Wake Up Alone” is the piano bar scene in Pillow Talk. All this and spared the four-day-long Shooting In The Round sight of Jennifer Hudson’s “And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going.”