Amy Winehouse; Case Study

Amy Winehouse; a defining artist of the 21st century. With her unique voice and interesting persona, making her unalike anyone during that time. I have chosen to study Amy Winehouse and her life, after watching the documentary 'Amy' in a cinema, with my media class.

 

As we are looking at music videos, and music stars, Amy is a crucial singer to look at, as she passed away so young but left such an untold story behind, with the drug abuse, the Grammys, the character and her past relationships it all entices me to look more into her story. 

 

I really enjoyed watching the documentary, although it was very sad, as I learned about the tumultuous life of Amy, and how being a pop star in the public eye, inevitably led to her excessive drug abuse and eventual downfall and death. Seeing Amy's muse, Blake Fielder, and their love story - although revolving a lot around drug and alcohol - made her lyrics clearer and the songs now have a deeper meaning to me, knowing the story behind her writing them. My favourite sequence was showing her relationship, the flashing lights and the speech in the background such as "we would've died for each other" emphasizing the amount of love she felt for Blake, and could've blinded her senses and he could've potentially pushed her to try all the class A drugs she did.

There was a big impact of using archive footage, of her life before she was famous, contrasting with footage from her life when she was famous. It showed her in a way he public didn't know her, giving us more of an insight.

 

I read an interview with Justin Bieber for NME in which he compares himself to Amy Winehouse and her mistreatment. He has been ridiculed and mocked by the press, facing a lot of backlash for his actions, which led to him spiralling out of control. He now has gotten back on track. But says of that time "I watched the Amy Winehouse documentary on the plane and had tears in my eyes because I could see what the media was doing to her, how they were treating her...People thought it was funny to poke her when she was at rock bottom, to keep pushing her down until she had no more of herself. And that's what they were trying to do to me". I found this intriguing as it shows how the media can respond to celebrities, and how they can lead to their downfall in some respects. Its interesting how the media can manipulate the public image of celebrities, which is unfair and cruel and it is still happening in the society we live in today.

Overall, I feel her life had the potential to be amazing, and from the music aspect it was amazing - winning Grammys, achieving a wide recognition for her work. However her personal life, despite being madly in love, began to spiral out of control with her drug abuse. Unfortunately, the consequences led to death. With her passing so young, it is heart-breaking as it could have been stopped with more help from those around her. What confuses me is the fact that her dad didn't insist that she needed to go to rehab, when everyone else did. The only persons opinion she listened to was her father, and that's where the inspiration for the song 'Rehab' came from, with lyrics such as "My daddy thinks I'm fine, but they try to make me go to Rehab and I wont go,go,go". Which is interesting, she was a character definitely, her behaviour and attitude as unalike any pop performer at the time which is intriguing.

Mitch Winehouse, Amy's fathers comments on the documentary interested me for many reasons. He spoke to the guardian about his views and said "it was horrible..I told them (the film-makers) they were a disgrace. I said: 'You should be ashamed of yourselves. You had the opportunity to make a wonderful film and you've made this". The comments got me thinking about the documentary, and why her own father would think this way; encouraging me to read on the article. Mitch says that the depiction of how she went to rehab was completely inaccurate saying "She wasn't drinking every day. She was like a lot of kids, going out binge-drinking. And I said 'she doesn't need to go to rehab" In the film it is shown the he says "she didn't need to go to rehab at that time".