Final thoughts on Amy Winehouse.

We will miss you, Amy.

behind the tabloids, the flame-outs, and the horrors of drug addiction was one of the most talented singer/songwriters of the last ten years. The fact that people don't pay for music anymore is just as much a reflection on new technology as it is a reflection that most of what record companies throw at the consumer is absolute garbage.

Amy Winehouse has left us. Suddenly, not entirely unexpected. Sadness befalls us, and the call to recollect on her complex life beckons. A life brought to stardom through her sheer talent, brought down ultimately by the addictions that she so poetically celebrated. Like the Irish poets before her, she wrote from her experience. And like the Irish poets, her experiences led to her untimely demise.

And like several prominent artists in more recent times, (Hendrix, Dean, Morrison, Joplin, Cobain) she left us at 27. It is almost eerily fitting that such a cast has left us at this exact age. 27 is a perfect cube, the product of 3 times 3 times three. Three dimensions. That's Amy. That's Jimi, James, Janis and Kurt.

Unlike the flat, two dimensional record-company groomed "artists" that are constantly spewed on commercial radio constantly, these are real people who have entered the cultural zeitgeist through talent and ingenuity. Amy had both in spades.


"I'm no good" was a song that sounded fresh, smooth, and a little bitter. Like a bottle of good wine. It can from Amy's heart, expressed beautifully on so many levels.

"Rehab" was ingenious, a remarkable ability to integrate catchy "hooks" into music without sounding like the idiotic child-like sing-songs of Madison Avenue garbage.  A remarkable use of real musicians seamlessly integrated with synthesizers to make real music. Not since Pete Townsend added a synthesizer to "Won't get fooled again," has electronics so enhanced the underlying soul of real music. And that was a long time ago.

Vintage without sounding old. New without pandering to the often idiotic trends of pop music. That's hard to do. That's the hallmark of Amy's work, and why we will miss her.

Goodbye, Amy.