Rock critics are used to seeing their recommendations ignored, especially when it comes to artists from outside the United States. So it's a bit of a surprise to see that Back To Black, the second album by British singer Amy Winehouse (but the first to get a wide release in the U.S.), has really caught on here. It debuted in the Billboard Top Ten, a fine showing for what was essentially a debut album. But instead of taking the quick tumble down the charts that's become commonplace for CDs in the iTunes era, Back To Black continued to sell steadily, and last week it jumped back to #6 on the Billboard chart. The record has gone gold, which has to be beyond the highest expectations of her label Universal Republic.
Winehouse is just now beginning to show up on the radio in a significant way, so how is it that she's sold so well, without an especially commercial (for 2007) sound? For starters, she's attracted a lot of attention outside the normal circles available for young musicians. This attention has come for what might be considered the wrong reasons in most contexts--her history of heavy drinking and onstage word-slurring (photos of her with an equally sloshed Kelly Osbourne on her first trip to the U.S. made the rounds of all the gossip blogs); and her on-again off-again on-again relationship with the boyfriend (and as of 3 weeks ago, husband) who inspired most of the songs on Back To Black. As far back as last winter, before the record was released over here, Winehouse was the subject of a long profile in the Washington Post, acknowledging her immense talent but setting her up as The Next Great Rock Tragedy in the making.
She's also been a hard worker in promotion of the record, popping up in nearly as many contexts as KT Tunstall did last year (Winehouse most recently had a high-profile appearance on the MTV Movie Awards, ironic since she's precisely the type of artist MTV shows no interest in these days). The Coachella Festival was another key moment in giving the album a second wind. For all her reputation for unreliability, Winehouse seems to have been more diligent about promoting herself stateside than fellow Brit Lily Allen, who hasn't made many friends with her frequent cancellation of shows (including in my city, dammit).
And of course, there's the record itself, which I won't necessarily call the best of 2007, but is certainly the one that's closest to my heart. I had been looking forward to this record since the first time I heard "Rehab" last fall; it's rare that I get this intrigued on a first listen to a song, but her voice insists you take notice (my biggest single oversight since I started this blog was not posting about Winehouse back then). Back To Black came out at an extreme low point in my life (a different sort of heartbreak than Winehouse sings about); and trite as it no doubt sounds, it was easy to imagine, as the winter lingered on, that she was singing for me. The album has the timeless sound of a true classic--unlike, say, "Umbrella", there's nothing about it that necessarily screams 2007--with its curious pastiche of '60 soul, Spectory girl groups, and jazzy phrasing supplied by Winehouse.
So will success spoil Amy Winehouse, or will a happy marriage turn her into a Spice Girl? It will be interesting to see; Back To Black was reportedly not an easy album to write, as Winehouse took an unusually long time between first and second records. Of course, she's still quite young (23), and might not yet have come into her own as a writer. The hope here is that she can put together the sort of decades-long career that's not dependent on chart fads (don't ask me how her tattoos are going to look 40 years down the road...shudder).
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