Winehouse won three Ivor Novello Awards: in 2004, Best Contemporary Song for "Stronger Than Me"; in 2007, Best Contemporary Song again, this time for "Rehab"; and in 2008, Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Love Is a Losing Game." She also won the 2007 Brit Award for Best British Female Artist, having been nominated for Best British Album, with Back to Black.

Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning on 23 July 2011, aged 27. Her album Back to Black posthumously became, for a time, the UK's best-selling album of the 21st century.[13] In 2012, Winehouse was ranked 26th on VH1's 100 Greatest Women In Music.[14] The BBC has called her "the pre-eminent vocal talent of her generation."[1

She's only 24 with six Grammy nominations, crashing headfirst into success and despair, with a codependent husband in jail, exhibitionist parents with questionable judgement, and the paparazzi documenting her emotional and physical distress. Meanwhile, a haute designer Karl Lagerfeld appropriates her dishevelled style and eating issues to market to the elite while proclaiming her the new Bardot.[163]

By 2008, her continued drug problems threatened her career. Even as Nick Gatfield, the president of Island Records, toyed with the idea of releasing Winehouse "to deal with her problems," he remarked on her talent, saying, "It's a reflection of her status [in the U.S.] that when you flick through the TV coverage [of the Grammys] it's her image they use."[164] Post-Grammys, some questioned whether Winehouse should have been honoured with the awards given her recent personal and drug problems,[165][166][167] including Natalie Cole, who introduced Winehouse at the ceremony and who herself battled substance-abuse problems while winning a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1975.[168] (Winehouse was prevented from traveling to and performing at the Grammy Awards ceremony in the US due to failing a drug test.[70]) In a newspaper commentary, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said that the alleged drug habits of Winehouse and other celebrities sent a bad message "to others who are vulnerable to addiction" and undermine the efforts of other celebrities trying to raise awareness of problems in Africa, now that more cocaine used in Europe passes through that continent.[169] Winehouse's spokesperson noted that "Amy has never given a quote about drugs or flaunted it in any way. She's had some problems and is trying to get better. The U.N. should get its own house in order."[170]

It has been argued that Winehouse became a staple in popularity polls not because of her musical contributions but because of her lifestyle. In January 2008, her record label stated they believed the extensive media coverage she had received increased record sales.[171] In an April 2008 poll conducted by Sky News, Winehouse was named the second greatest "ultimate heroine" by the UK population at large, topping the voting for that category of those polled under 25 years old.[172] Psychologist Donna Dawson commented that the results demonstrated that women like Winehouse who had "a certain sense of vulnerability or have had to fight against some adversity in their lives" received recognition.[172]

In July 2008, BBC Radio Scotland's head, Jeff Zycinski, stated that the BBC, and media in general, were complicit in undermining celebrities, including Winehouse.[173] He said that public interest in the singer's lifestyle did not make her lifestyle newsworthy. Rod McKenzie, editor of the BBC Radio One programme Newsbeat, replied: "If you play [Amy Winehouse's] music to a certain demographic, those same people want to know what's happening in her private life. If you don't cover it, you're insulting young license fee payers."[173] In The Scotsman, British singer and songwriter Lily Allen was quoted to have said – "I know Amy Winehouse very well. And she is very different to what people portray her as being. Yes, she does get out of her mind on drugs sometimes, but she is also a very clever, intelligent, witty, funny person who can hold it together. You just don't see that side."[174]

свернуть