Amy Winehose: Twenty years of that classic called “Back To Black”

It’s not easy to talk about Amy Winehouse without a feeling of loss and deep sadness constantly hovering over each word that determines the story. That feeling that she gave us absolutely everything and we failed to protect her from her demons.

This coming month of October “Back To Black” (Universal, 06) turns twenty years old. The album dedicated to love at its finest, and that changed everything, is celebrating. The work that was born from the most intense and piercing pain; and that launched her into that terrifying, abusive fame that she was so afraid of discovering.

“Amy decided to live her independence in style in Camden to absorb all that explosion of guitars and discord that reigned in that area”

Amy Winehouse I wrote songs to feel like I could be happy, even if it was only for a few moments. To build connections with an earthly world he never fully understood. Corners in which he could turn darkness into something good and take refuge there when he needed it with all his soul. “Back To Black” It emerged as a generational work that perfectly exposes the relationship that Amy had with music in a pure and visceral way. Without filters, he portrayed a vulnerability, honesty and creative rawness that we have never seen in anyone in such a powerful way. He took everything very calmly, he was not afraid of the pressures or impositions that the industry could handle. She simply wanted to tell her story at the precise moment she felt she had to. A story that, from the beginning, was always marked by a very great emotional dependence on certain male figures and a gigantic lack of affection that was never satisfied. And Amy’s mother had to raise her family practically alone and her parents’ divorce completely marked her, bringing to light a toxic relationship with them that, as we well know, would have terrifying consequences over time.

With “Frank.” (Universal, 03), her first album, Amy was happy without having all those pressures that would come later. There she took refuge in jazz, in a more “elitist” environment as she herself defined it. And, the truth is that without that first album you couldn’t understand what it ended up being. “Back To Black” as an album, since the foundations of everything were built on it: his language without filters or relationships like that of Salaam Remi, who would become his reference producer and friend. After completing the entire campaign planned to push “Frank.”Amy decided to live her independence in style in Camden to absorb all that explosion of guitars and unrest that reigned in that area with figures like The Libertines. And that was when, one night, the figure of Blake would appear from the shadows. That cursed child drowned by the self-destruction that would change everything.

Amy ended up becoming addicted to the pain that Blake caused her. He tried to flee to Miami when it did not let him live in his heart and there he met again with Salaam to, through the composition of new songs, find some emotional calm. From those days “Tears Dry On Their Own” was born, an anthem song by “Back To Black” who emerged in a state of brilliance away from drugs and alcohol. But there was still something missing that kept rumbling in his being and that had to come out somehow. That’s when, in March 2006, Amy flew to New York to meet Mark Ronson there in a small studio in Soho. Ronson himself said that, during the first day of recording and in just two hours, Amy had already written all the lyrics and music for the song. “Back To Black”. And the moment Amy decided to go to Blake’s memory to compose, everything came together and the rest is history.

After the death of Cynthia, her grandmother, Amy returned to London. At this point, it would end up destroyed by the absence of so many pillars to support it and, shortly after, Blake would take advantage of that weakness to squeeze out what he couldn’t at the time. The truth is that Amy never got over what it meant to create “Back To Black” as a project, that cursed record that scratched his soul every time he got up to play it on stage, which he always wanted to replace and was never able to do so. Because, the truth is that at the end of her career Amy no longer wanted to, nor could she, touch the material of “Back To Black” live. What he needed were new songs that would help him go through the phases and serve as support for the succession of events with which he was trying to rebuild his life again.

Now the twentieth anniversary edition is coming out, with some of the original demos that she recorded in those months with Ronson in New York and that reflect very well how everything was there from the first moment Amy entered the studio. An album dedicated to The Shangri-Las and The Specials. The masterpiece with which he managed to sell more than four and a half million copies in the United Kingdom and more than twenty-five million worldwide. And with which he was able to make one of his dreams come true when he saw how his beloved Tony Bennett gave him the Record Of The Year at the 2008 Grammy Awards.