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#1 suestev07

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Posted 18 June 2009 - 04:44 PM

tks to Mama Haze for the other "Ooold Interview" -

http://www.amywineho...read.php?t=4197

this is a link on that page - a hilarious interview, especially toward the end about her boyfriend, and her father

http://www.telegraph...-big-mouth.html

Neil McCormick
Published: 12:01AM GMT 15 Jan 2004

"I've Got a Big Mouth"

'I've got a big mouth'

Brit award nominee Amy Winehouse's songs are flirty, dirty and heartbreaking. Not that the 20-year-old jazz-soul sensation ever minces her words. Neil McCormick meets her

Neil McCormick
Published: 12:01AM GMT 15 Jan 2004

Posted Image Amy Winehouse: there's a refreshing glint of bitchiness, a friendly sarcasm much in evidence in her songs

Even in an era when pop stars just seem to keep getting younger, the almost preternatural combination of vitality and maturity of Amy Winehouse seems surprising.

Her big, smoky, sensual voice sounds steeped in a century of jazz and soul, evoking comparison with such divas as Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, but her beats and attitude burst with the contemporary snap of a 21st-century urban teenager. Last year's debut album, Frank, released when she was just 19, introduced Winehouse as one of the most exciting and original talents in the UK.

Her fluid grasp of melody and the nuance in her singing was well served by a collection of delightfully sparky, self-written songs evoking the emotional and social life of a North London girl who sounded as if she had been through the love wars.

By turns dirty, flirty, funny, sarcastic, abusive, self-lacerating, heartbreaking and extraordinarily worldly wise, the musical debutante was rewarded this week with a Brit nomination for Best Female Act. However, she is not letting the praise turn her head.

"I'm not a great singer, yaknowotamean?" she says, with a kind of cheerful, common-sense dismissiveness. "People are very throwaway with their words these days. If someone comes out and they've got hoop earrings and a big bum, it's like, 'She's a diva!' You have to earn these things. Not from other people, from yourself. You have to earn your own respect."

She admits to being pleased by the Brit nomination. "It's very flattering to be acknowledged, especially to be put with the women as opposed to the new artists. I feel like I've jumped a step. But it's Dido's award, really, isn't it? She has to get it so everyone can kind of justify why they bought her album."

There is a refreshing glint of bitchiness about Winehouse, a friendly sarcasm much in evidence in her songs. Her debut single, Stronger Than Me, weighed into the battle of the sexes with a very un-PC attack on a passive male boyfriend. "I feel like a lady and you my ladyboy", she sings, before inquiring: "Are you gay?"

"I think I'm a dopey, soppy, happy, sensitive person, but I've got a big mouth, yaknowwotamean?" she laughs.

Done up to the nines (lustrous lipstick, dark mascara, long black eyelashes, thick black hair), Winehouse looks every inch the Jewish princess. It is an image that suits her jazzy milieu, but when she opens her mouth to speak it is more Barbara Windsor than Queen's English.

The mix of sophistication and earthy, working-class sensibility is quite beguiling. Her father is an East End taxi driver obsessed with Frank Sinatra. "My dad's great. He is like the karaoke Sinatra. He has a CD in his cab of all the backing tracks. He could be a lounge act, he's that good."

Winehouse, who plays guitar, has been focused on jazz her whole life. "I've been very lucky with the record deal and the beautiful blessings that came with it, but I want more from life than people knowing who I am," she says.

"I'm not the girl who worked and dreamt the hardest. I'm just a musician who put some songs together."

From the age of 15, she sang in a big band and says: "That's all I ever wanted to do. Although it was a bit too straight for me. If you wanna talk about trad jazz versus bebop, my interest is in that area where Charlie Parker realised that within a chord you could play the derivatives - that's what really drives me.

"But, if my career should die right now, I would go to Vegas and be a lounge singer, do that every night for the rest of my life, and I would be completely happy, yaknowwotamean?"

She is managed by a division of 19, the music and media empire of Pop Idol svengali Simon Fuller. But, when they first approached her - at the age of 16 - Winehouse repeatedly rebuffed them, afraid that they would try to turn her into another karaoke queen.

"I was a tunnel-vision teenager. I knew what I wanted to do, and I didn't believe them when they said, 'We're not gonna pop you up.' "

It took over a year for her to be persuaded of their intentions, whereupon she began working on her album for Universal Island, productively linking up with Ms Dynamite producer Salaam Remi.

The period she spent writing and recording coincided with a rise in the commercial fortunes of the whole jazz-soul genre, with the global success of Norah Jones paving the way for Winehouse and Jamie Cullum, each bringing a new twist to an old sound.

"I think, with any musician, you take in as much as you can of all these different influences, and when it comes out it's unique because it's filtered through you."

Winehouse can be flip and irreverent, but, when she talks about music, her love for it is invigorating. She called her album Frank not just as a reflection of her lyrical attitude but in homage to her father's musical hero.

"Sinatra was an arsehole, I do understand that, but he had something, this connection to the songs."

Discussing In the Wee Small Hours, she calls it the greatest heartbreak album ever made and rhapsodises about the clarinet on What Is This Thing Called Love, singing the horn line that introduces the ballad.

"The melody is so sad. I've always thought, for a woodwind instrument, the clarinet is kind of cold. It's such a good instrument to put at the beginning, because it's kind of hollow like Frank when he comes in, singing, 'What is this thing?' "

In the Wee Small Hours was given to her by a boyfriend. When they broke up, she put all his presents in a box and returned them to him, then immediately wrote the tearjerking Take the Box, her new single (released this week), which includes the line, "Frank's in there, but I don't care."

Much of the album, indeed, details this on/off affair in insightful and uncompromising fashion. "I'm hard on him," she admits, "but I'm hard on myself, too." Then she reveals, with a deliciously comical sense of gossipy indiscretion, that her romantic muse has not heard her album.

"The last time I spoke to him, he said, 'Send me an album.' I said to him, 'Do me a favour! I don't even have a copy myself, so what am I supposed to send you?' So he said, 'Go in the shop and buy me one.' And I said, 'Why?' And he goes, 'Because I'm too embarrassed. I can't go in the shop and buy an album that is about me.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, but people don't know you! If I go in a shop, they'd be like, 'You're buying your own album, you sad bitch!' Yaknowwotamean!?! And he said to me, 'Look, I've got to see you, I owe you a tenner, so why don't you just give me an album when I see you.' I said, 'I'll tell you what, why don't you keep the tenner, let's not see each other, just go and buy the album for fuck's sake!' "
It is a little diatribe that perfectly reflects the vibrant personality at the heart of this extraordinarily rich recording, as lyrically outspoken as it is musically substantial.

"My dad sings my songs all the time," says Winehouse. "The songs are very intimate to me, but I've had to say to myself, they're out of me now, they're in the world, anyone can hear them.

"But it's still embarrassing when your dad sings all the risque lines and goes, 'You meant that in the rude way, didn't you? You're terrible, Amy.'

And I'm like, 'Oh my God, someone kill me!' "
\"it was as if all the emotions in the universe suddenly were coming out of her mouth.\" --Entertainment Weekly music critic Chris Willman.

"It's open-heart surgery set to music" - Sunday Herald article by Peter Ross Jan 7/07

"Be kinder than necessary...because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle." - Anon.

#2 suestev07

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    injured butterfly is so talented, it hurts

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Posted 18 June 2009 - 04:52 PM

And another link on that page:

http://www.telegraph...ing-violet.html

Flower of Brit-soul turns shrinking violet

Neil McCormick reviews Amy Winehouse at the Jazz Cafe, London NW1

Neil McCormick
Published: 12:01AM GMT 29 Jan 2004

Amy Winehouse is a potential superstar with her distinctive looks, timeless yet contemporary style, witty, emotional songs, and the kind of sensational, smoky, sultry jazz-diva voice that can make grown men weak at the knees. She is the girl with everything - except stage presence.

It seems unlikely, but the 20-year-old jazz-soul sensation, whose album Frank reeks of streetwise attitude and an awareness beyond her years, looks out of her depth on stage.

Perhaps it's not quite accurate to say she has no stage presence. She looks good in the spotlight, with her wide, expressive mouth, her dark hair falling in front of her face, and the shoulder strap of her little black dress constantly requiring adjustment as it slips provocatively lower.

What she lacks is stage craft. She appears unexpectedly nervous, covering her mouth to whisper to her fellow musicians (as if the audience can't see her); mumbling bland introductions to songs ("Oh yeah, this one!" is about as good as it gets), and spending most of the gig studying the neck of her electric guitar, as if she needs to keep a close eye on her chord changes.

In fact, the guitar is a real problem. I suspect that Winehouse would like nothing better than to be one of the band. She is clearly thrilled by the virtuoso musicianship of her backing players, grinning incredulously at the sensational guitar, flute and keyboard solos of multi-instrumental musical director Ian Barter, but she never really assumes the responsibility of her own role as frontwoman.

She seems to be concentrating so hard on her guitar-playing that she lets her mouth drift to and from the microphone, so that volume rises and falls erratically, while lyrics tumble out in a succession of slurred vowels, as if devoid of any meaning. It seems ridiculous to suggest that this talented singer-songwriter should lay down her instrument, but her best vocal performance came when she did just that, backed by Barter's guitar on Greater Love.

If this review seems harsh, it is only because Winehouse's potential is so evident. Musically, this is stirring stuff, a pungent stew of urban soul and jazz that has an earthy vibrancy conjuring up the ghosts of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.

Winehouse has already gone straight to the head of the Brit-soul pack. If she steps up a gear, she could have the world at her feet.
\"it was as if all the emotions in the universe suddenly were coming out of her mouth.\" --Entertainment Weekly music critic Chris Willman.

"It's open-heart surgery set to music" - Sunday Herald article by Peter Ross Jan 7/07

"Be kinder than necessary...because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle." - Anon.

#3 kevd7

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Posted 18 June 2009 - 07:08 PM

she's too much "If I go in a shop, they'd be like, 'You're buying your own album, you sad bitch!' " :lol:

#4 Alan48

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Posted 18 June 2009 - 07:23 PM

would love to hear her singing that clarinet intro to "What Is This Thing Called Love"


#5 suestev07

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Posted 18 June 2009 - 08:11 PM

http://www.telegraph...-Winehouse.html
This is a review in reverse....Amy reviewing Erykah Badu!LOL
Who knew!? haha....talk about emotional....

The gig of a lifetime: Amy Winehouse



Published: 12:03AM GMT 11 Nov 2004



Posted Image 'Blown away': Amy Winehouse


The singer on Erykah Badu at the Brixton Academy, 2001
It was the first time I'd ever been to Brixton and it was completely packed. I was young - about 17 - and so in love with Erykah Badu.


She was amazing, a real drama queen who had the whole crowd in the palm of her hand. I was so blown away that, about 45 minutes into the set, I passed out. I remember feeling the blood drain from my face.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with about 10 people staring down at me, and my A&R man's finger shoved into my mouth to stop me biting my tongue. Then the bouncer came and hauled me off to the medical unit, where I spent the second half of the set with my legs in the air.

Edited by suestev07, 18 June 2009 - 08:58 PM.

\"it was as if all the emotions in the universe suddenly were coming out of her mouth.\" --Entertainment Weekly music critic Chris Willman.

"It's open-heart surgery set to music" - Sunday Herald article by Peter Ross Jan 7/07

"Be kinder than necessary...because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle." - Anon.

#6 amyfanatic

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Posted 21 June 2009 - 07:37 PM

'I'll tell you what, why don't you keep the tenner, let's not see each other, just go and buy the album for fuck's sake!' "
JUST LMAOOOO!
Posted Image

"I don`t listen to anyone...except my inner child anyway."

Amy.J.Winehouse.

#7 Mama_Haze

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Posted 22 June 2009 - 09:56 AM

Thanks, Sue, for the chuckles... :)

#8 Winehousedrunk

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Posted 22 June 2009 - 02:24 PM

would love to hear her singing that clarinet intro to "What Is This Thing Called Love"

What a melancholic intro... and then Frank comes in... exactly like Amy described it; gives me a better insight in her musical history, to what and how she listens, and how she responds to it.
Amy Winehouse died, and she's taken a part of my soul with her. May that part be the love that I felt for her, and may the love that I still feel for her be the undying part of us both.

#9 Winehousedrunk

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Posted 22 June 2009 - 03:25 PM

Those articles from 2004 combined paint a picture of Amy that in my view is closer to the truth and more complete than anything that has come after. They make me wish that Amy could reconnect with who she was then. I am aware that that is impossible, and in fact undesirable, as her years between now and then have almost killed her. Therefore, I must be meaning the essence of Amy, so to speak, or her elusive Self, or call it what you will. I don't think that the original Amy is gone, or could even ever be gone, but that it has become a little too well-hidden, perhaps. But then, she is a treasure, and treasures are often well-hidden. And often on an island. Who knows the secret, who has the map? Come out, Amy, let yourself shine through in which ever way you like, and we'll love you for it, as you are the genuine article. (And buy a parrot, for when the tabloids ask you questions that you can't be bothered to answer.)

Edited by Winehousedrunk, 22 June 2009 - 03:28 PM.

Amy Winehouse died, and she's taken a part of my soul with her. May that part be the love that I felt for her, and may the love that I still feel for her be the undying part of us both.

#10 ashlee

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Posted 22 June 2009 - 07:01 PM

Those articles from 2004 combined paint a picture of Amy that in my view is closer to the truth and more complete than anything that has come after. They make me wish that Amy could reconnect with who she was then. I am aware that that is impossible, and in fact undesirable, as her years between now and then have almost killed her. Therefore, I must be meaning the essence of Amy, so to speak, or her elusive Self, or call it what you will. I don't think that the original Amy is gone, or could even ever be gone, but that it has become a little too well-hidden, perhaps. But then, she is a treasure, and treasures are often well-hidden. And often on an island. Who knows the secret, who has the map? Come out, Amy, let yourself shine through in which ever way you like, and we'll love you for it, as you are the genuine article. (And buy a parrot, for when the tabloids ask you questions that you can't be bothered to answer.)



I loved what you wrote <3
and couldn't agree more! as I think she is kind of trapped inside a body that people know has THE WINO,THE DRUG ADDICT, THE REPTILE, and all this negative associations, that keep the real Amy Winehouse, THE STRONG and KIND WOMAN, THE LIONESS, in there, because, unfortunately the negative feelings/opinions are, most of the time, the strongest ones, and prevail against all the good.
Our ability to SEE HER, has been denied and manipulated by the press, constantly!
but i know she is there somewhere, inside, and sometimes we can see some bits of it, when she smiles and when she's taking care of the kids in st lucia.
She is trying to get out, and lately, in my opinion, I was able to see HER, so I think she's making lots of progress, she's not just a body walking around, like not so long ago in Camden Town (just made a rhyme lool).
:-P
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
five story fire as you came

#11 Winehousedrunk

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Posted 22 June 2009 - 10:39 PM

I loved what you wrote <3
and couldn't agree more! as I think she is kind of trapped inside a body that people know has THE WINO,THE DRUG ADDICT, THE REPTILE, and all this negative associations, that keep the real Amy Winehouse, THE STRONG and KIND WOMAN, THE LIONESS, in there, because, unfortunately the negative feelings/opinions are, most of the time, the strongest ones, and prevail against all the good.
Our ability to SEE HER, has been denied and manipulated by the press, constantly!
but i know she is there somewhere, inside, and sometimes we can see some bits of it, when she smiles and when she's taking care of the kids in st lucia.
She is trying to get out, and lately, in my opinion, I was able to see HER, so I think she's making lots of progress, she's not just a body walking around, like not so long ago in Camden Town (just made a rhyme lool).
:-P

And I loved what you wrote!LOL Sincerely.:)
Amy Winehouse died, and she's taken a part of my soul with her. May that part be the love that I felt for her, and may the love that I still feel for her be the undying part of us both.





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