If I'm remembering correctly, Lucian Grainge, the head of Amy's record label, was once quoted as say he had heard demos for her 3rd album and they were fantastic. I wonder which tracks he was referring to.
I can't help wondering that too...
Crol, thank you for the Times' review, it's very interesting and informative.
Another review, from the Daily Mail:
Thank you, Amy: ADRIAN THRILLS listens to a new album of unreleased songs... and is enchanted by the music the singer left behind
By Adrian Thrills
Last updated at 10:34 PM on 3rd November 2011
This week’s news that Island Records have put together a collection of unreleased songs by Amy Winehouse in time for Christmas will have been met with some trepidation by the late singer’s millions of fans.
Posthumous albums are a tricky proposition. On one hand, there is the demand from fans for new material. On the other, there is the unwritten obligation, one that is often ignored, to treat a deceased artist with some respect.
When the singer in question was as picky and uncompromising as Winehouse, who died, aged 27, in her London home in July, that task is all the more difficult. After all, here was a musician dubbed ‘one of the most honest I have ever known’ by veteran crooner Tony Bennett.
But Winehouse’s trustees — her record label, family and long-time musical partners Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson — have done a decent job in showing due consideration for her legacy on Lioness: Hidden Treasures, a 12-track album out on December 5.
Winehouse was an astonishing natural talent. Despite her demons, she was a major British artist whose best years surely lay ahead of her. And all of the attributes that made her such a compelling studio performer are evident here.
On the downside, Lioness is far from the third studio album that Amy’s fans had been willing her to make ever since 2006’s classic Back To Black.
That record and her 2003 debut, Frank, were based almost entirely on her own songwriting. It can be safely assumed that Amy’s third album proper, had she lived, would have followed a similar pattern.
This is more of a mish-mash. Of its 12 tracks, only six are original compositions, and one of those, Tears Dry, is a re-working, albeit a wonderfully dramatic one, of a song from Back To Black. The other six numbers are covers, including Body And Soul, her duet with Bennett, and a new version of Valerie.
Much of the album has been overseen by Salaam Remi. Though Winehouse’s biggest hits were studio-crafted by Mark Ronson, her relationship with Remi goes back further.
A New Yorker who moved to Miami after the 2001 terror attacks, he made his reputation on the hip-hop circuit, but, as he proved on Amy’s previous albums, he is a producer with a great ear for pop hooks and soulful arrangements. His unifying presence is crucial to the album’s overall sound.
With nine years spanning the oldest track (a cover of The Girl From Ipanema) to the most recent (the Bennett duet), Lioness feels uneven. Remi’s deft production goes some way towards forging something coherent from the patchwork ingredients.
The producer was in London the day Winehouse died, and the pair had planned to attend the wedding of a mutual friend that fateful weekend.
He says piecing the album together was a healing process for him. ‘I had a big brother relationship with Amy,’ he says.
‘With me, there was a musical space where she could be herself and not worry about anything else.’
The first song he and Amy worked on together, a sunny cover of The Girl From Ipanema, has been dusted down here. Though Amy was only 18 when it was recorded, she sounds far from overwhelmed at the prospect of tackling a bossa nova standard. Her take is rough and ready, but it also reiterates just how well she could improvise.
‘The way she re-interpreted a classic made me realise I was dealing with a special talent. Her approach was so young and fresh,’ says Salaam.
‘I didn’t even know what she looked like until I met her, but she just came in with her acoustic guitar and sang the song. She put something into it I’d never heard before.’
Lioness features several other songs from the time of Amy’s debut. Some are demos or early takes to which Remi has subsequently added backing vocals and strings, though the producer maintains he spent only two weeks touching up the material, just as he would do with any recording.
Of these older tracks, the highlight is Halftime, a mellow nu-soul ballad in the style of Texan singer Erykah Badu. A song about Amy’s love of music, it captures her at the peak of her emotional powers and features a passing reference to Ol’ Blue Eyes.
‘And when Frank Sinatra sings, it’s too much to take/He pacifies my ache,’ she sings.
Of the newer songs, the stand-out is Between The Cheats. Recorded in 2008, it features an upbeat, doo-wop arrangement similar to the Back To Black album track Me And Mr Jones.
Though the words are hard to decipher, it has sparked speculation that it was inspired by Amy’s relationship with former husband Blake Fielder-Civil, whom she divorced in 2009.
‘My husband is the finest, handsome hustler,’ she sings. ‘He still makes this housewife blush.’
The real tear-jerker is A Song For You. Written by Leon Russell and made famous by the late U.S. soul man Donny Hathaway, it captures Amy at her most vulnerable and heart-rending.
Far from her best song technically, it was recorded in one take in her home studio in 2009, apparently with tears rolling down her cheeks as she sang.
It also closes with a snippet of studio chit-chat that Amy’s fans will love, as the singer talks to Remi about her admiration for her all-time favourite singer Hathaway: ‘Like, Marvin Gaye . . . great. But Donny Hathaway . . . it was like he couldn’t contain himself, he had something in him.’
As did Amy herself. And while Lioness might not be the sequel to Back To Black she might have ultimately come up with, it is a fitting tribute that is unlikely to leave anyone feeling short-changed.
With reports suggesting there is more unreleased material in the vaults, it is to be hoped the curators of Amy’s legacy maintain the same standards.
TOP TRACKS
Between The Cheats (May 2008)
This excellent song adds doo-wop influence to one of Amy’s own numbers.
Wake Up Alone (March 2006)
The first song recorded for Back To Black, this never made the final cut. Brilliantly sung.
Our Day Will Come (May 2002)
reggae re-vamp of a 1963 Ruby & The Romantics hit.
Halftime (August 2002)
Beautiful nu-soul ballad that could grow into one of Amy’s most loved songs.
The Girl From Ipanema (May 2002)
Amy summons up the spirit of Brazilian singer Astrud Gilberto. The first song she sang — when she was just a teenager — when she met her producer Salaam Remi.
http://www.dailymail...eft-behind.html
Edited by Nasha, 05 November 2011 - 02:06 AM.
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