In praise of…Amy Winehouse

The British have an interesting and perversely selective approach to adopting aspects of other cultures. Generally, we take something which is great in its native country and make it crap. This is a shame because we’ve already got enough crap stuff of our own without needing to import more. Lager is a good example – fantastic in the countries where lager is the national drink, but when Britain, a country traditionally suspicious of any drink you can see through, makes lager, it produces fizzy urine (and after six pints so do I).

The one imported mutated triumph is chicken tikka masala. Apparently unknown in India, this is Britain’s favourite curry – adapted to the British palate by removing the spices and adding yoghurt. It’s usually served with lager.

The British are perhaps worst when they try and imitate Americans. There’s nothing sadder than a group of sullen teenagers hanging round the centre of a shire town dressed in jeans that are tailored to let their arse hang out of them in a way which used to be described as ‘builder’s crack’ but is now hip, or possibly hop and wearing their baseball caps back to front. I don’t know much about Compton but I bet there are very few thatched buildings there. The incongruity of transplanting transatlantic behaviour results in a scene as ludicrous as a load of pink-coated toffs from the Berkely Hunt engaging in a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail (which would actually be quite fun, blood-sports enthusiasts may be used to dealing with hunt sabs, but enraged Commanch may be another matter).

Being tragically unhip, the only thing I knew about Amy Winehouse is that she always looks like she needs a bath and that she’s reported to be too busy drinking to spend time washing. Hearing ‘Rehab’ on the radio, I got hold of the album.

Jesus Christ! What a voice! What a talent! The odd thing is that after looking her up on the internet, she does not appear to be a black woman born in 1930 in the South who went on to make a living singing in Harlem clubs before an untimely death involving drink, gunfire, drugs, an enraged boyfriend or all of the above at once with a reindeer thrown in for added effect. She’s from Croydon.

How can it be then, that when I put her music on, I don’t even have to close my eyes to start imagining being in a very small, very hot, very very smoky club at about two in the morning, with my shirt sticking to my back, my eye sockets feeling like they are full of grit, the bottle of bourbon nearly empty on the small, round, sticky table in front of me, listening mesmerised to the woman on stage who appears to be channelling Ella. You can tell its nostalgia because you can’t smoke indoors anymore. I’m not even sure you can smoke in your own head anymore.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that she’s famous and, er, troubled. I guess you don’t get a voice like that without suffering a bit; songs about heartbreak do not write themselves. When was the last time Mick Jagger was inspired by suffering? I’m looking forward to him writing a song about his knees playing him up when its damp, but apart from that where do you draw inspiration from? Amy may well draw it from the bottom of a Smirnoff bottle but I guess it’s not the drinking that makes the songs interesting, but what happens after the bottle is empty. For me the answer is usually ‘passing out with your shoes on’ and occasionally ‘vomiting’. That, and a complete lack of musical talent, is why when I’m in a right old state I’m described as ‘pissed’ and Amy is ‘exhausted’.