Like many, probably all of you, I’ve been horrified by the carnage in Norway this weekend. Right-wing neo-Nazi extremism, racial bigotry, hatred, Christianity, Freemasonry – whatever the misguided foolish notions of Anders Behring Breivik’s tiny brain, all he has done has left a massive hole in the hearts of an entire generation of Norwegians. I feel sick to the stomach by the brutality and senseless of such violence, committed in the name of God. I want nothing to do with any God that allows such slaughter.
On an equally sad, but far more predictable note, our favourite chanteuse, Amy Winehouse, has also passed from this mortal coil this weekend. Dead at 27. One of the more predictable deaths the world has ever seen, there’s no need for people to express shock or surprise at this – we all saw it coming, as did she: she lived her life like a car-crash in slow motion, wearing her heart out on her sleeve in tattoos all clear to see. Daddy’s Girl. Blake’s written over her heart, despite him looking like one of the world’s major drongos. A predicable death, yes: an avoidable death, perhaps even that. Especially after the debacle in Belgrade just gone by, where she stumbled out on stage, clearly more drunk and incoherent than usual, only to be jeered at by the uncaring Serbs. Yes, it is unprofessional to be on stage drunk – but clearly Amy was having a major meltdown in her short and sorry life. A bit of compassion wouldn’t have gone amiss! All too late now.
I wonder how much we should take notice of song lyrics, when they are so clearly self-destructive – Kurt Cobain screaming out that he doesn’t have a gun, when clearly he did; Michael Jackson telling us he was Bad, and also clearly Sad and Mad. Janice Joplin clearly very unhappy at 17, and now Amy Winehouse, who has been living the pain that we all think we feel – expressing the heartache of a million teenage angst-ridden fantasies, but probably on a diet less filled with smack than hers.
I can’t say more without getting maudlin, so instead I’ll just leave her life to be played out in the lyrics to her wonderfully black and moving songs.
What kind of fuckery is this, i can’t believe you played me out like that. You can’t keep lying to yourself like this. It’s never safe for us, not even in the evening, cos i’ve been drinking. Not in the morning. Its always dangerous, while everyone is sleeping. Although I’m not ashamed, but the guilt will kill you, if she don’t first. I’ll never love you, like her.
But we need to find the time, Let’s do this shit together, before it gets worse. I wanna touch you, but that just hurts. When will we get the time to be just friends?
He left no time to regret, kept his dick wet, with his same old same bed. Me, with my head high, without my guy. You go back to her, and I go back to – to us. Its not enough, you love blow, and I love puff. We only said goodbye with words, I died a hundred times. You go back to her, and I go back to… I go back to black…
He walks away – the sun goes down – he takes the day – my tears dry on their own.
Bothers my heart, I’d rather be restless, this ache in my tits, cos my day is done now, the dark covers me, and I cannot run now. I wake up alone…
The lights are on, but no ones home, she’s so vacant, her soul is taken, he thinks, what’s she running from… so he tries to pacify her, with the words inside her…
Oh dear, another one for the 27 club. Sad.
PUtting her in the same club as Kurt, Jimi, John M et al is grossly overstating how talented Ms Winehouse was. Sure, one or two good songs you could sing along to, but did she touch and entire generation (and following ones also)?
No.
Cruel to be kind, but it’s probably a good thing that she put herself out of her misery.
Oh Seamonkey, that’s a bit savage. Very harsh. Jimmy Hendrix was way before my time, and I never really got that whole grunge thing that Kurt seemed to personify – but music transcends all boundaries. I remember the day that Take That broke up, and small girls were weeping on every street corner.
Each to their own… Amy still holds a permanent tattoed place in one corner of my ink-stained heart…
The pictures, by the way, all taken from her videos. Last image is of Amy during the Back to Black video – where the b&w video portentously showed her burying a small wooden inlaid box in a north London cemetery. The camera pans out past teh assembled muso crowd – screen never shows us the words on the tombstone – but the words RIP – the Soul of Amy Winehouse – 2007 appear. Or at least they did on the version of the video I watched yesterday. Today the words don’t appear…
Live fast, die young, stay pretty…
A very sad thing to see however, we were lucky to have someone who tore in to the heart of jazz and ripped out some of its current complacency… I doubt if 27 has anything to do with anything – I don’t think her talent will reach as far as Kurt and Jimi… but it’s still a huge loss to passion and craziness.
Is that Severus Snape on the right in the last photo? Does this mean that she was a Harry Potter fan?
No. ….and, don’t know. I suspect: No. She had real demons to deal with, not imaginary ones…