Back to black

I am pretty much fascinated by Amy Winehouse (which I realize does not sound an original comment). I am listening to Back to Black as I write, which is the first really good CD I have bought in years (yes, I still buy CD's - but now you can listen to them first, which is a step forward). Until about three months ago I had heard the name, but it meant nothing to me - maybe vague associations with fleeting media celebrity, a flavor of the month somewhere, in something. Then I saw a video while in line at the HMV - a diminutive white woman in a cocktail dress circa 1963 with about 30 pounds of hair piled vertically above her head, accompanied by two black guys in Dragnet suits and fedoras doing a funky two step, arms awindmill and sweat pouring down their faces. I almost expected them to run off stage and come back on in black-face. The singer, oblivious to the dancers three feet away, wore a demeanor of liminal insouciance as she made dainty little lady steps from side to side. Even with the sound off, you could tell there was a disconnect between the Betty Boop appearance and whatever the music was.

Sure enough - starting with the lyrics. From Me & Mr. Jones, for example: "What kind of fuckery are we? These days you don't mean dick to me." Okay, she's got street cred. I love rhymes like that. Reminds me of a line from Eminem: Let's get down to business, don't mess around what is this?" (What happened to him, btw?). Another line for which I have a soft spot, from Tears Dry on their Own: "I should be my own best friend and not fuck myself in the head with 'superman'... "). Hmm... maybe you have to hear it.

But besides being an oddly gifted singer, she's also a gifted songwriter. Her's is the first new pop sound since I don't know what. When I first heard Back to Black I immediately liked two or three of the 10 songs. Two months later, I love all of them. I won't blabber on about her style, jazz background, etc., because I took Music Appreciation pass/fail, which was nearly disastrous.

And then there is the elephant in the living room. The Attitude. Actually, there are two, I would say, the musical one and the Other Really Big Fucked Up One. On the former, I thought Bob Dylan was the only Jew with soul (check out Where Are You Tonight on "Street Legal"), but apparently there are two. On the second, well, she will probably be long dead before she approaches Dylan's stature. I will skip the barbs and the moralizing - from what I have seen (and there's a lot to see on YouTube) she acts by pure instinct with apparently little reflection (which is largely but not uniquely from the fact that she is a junkie). She seems the type of creature who belongs in a Robinson Jeffers poem - spare and spartan, more a wounded bird of prey than a person. I suspect her last words will be fuck off.

[Despite the retro-motown feel of the music and tours, the title track of "Back to Black" is about the singer's return to depression after a break-up - "You go back to her and I go back to black".]