There is something arresting about seeing the musical icons of your own era memorialised. I was too young to have really understood what Kurt Cobain’s death meant when the news came on the radio, but I remember bursting into tears in my Hoxton flat when I heard about Amy Winehouse, who was two years younger than me.
I didn’t know her, but I’d often see her around her beloved Camden, in the Hawley Arms or on a night out at Koko. Once at Proud Galleries, some tourists asked me if she was there, as if hunting a favourite character at a theme park. “Camden,” I said rolling my eyes to my friend, “has peaked.”
Her death in 2011 was, incidentally, a watershed moment for how we experience our limelight heroes. It was less than a year after Instagram launched. You can’t imagine Winehouse having much truck with get ready-with-me-selfies or sponsored content. Or maybe you can imagine her saying something wonderfully caustic about it. Singers now are snapped up by superbrands as soon as they slide up the TikTok charts; new releases punctuated by high-profile collaborations and campaigns.
But Winehouse was a glorious original, the likes of which are thin on the ground in our homogenous, algorithm-friendly conveyor belt of “stars”. She was of the moment in her style but completely idiosyncratic. The yellow Preen “power” dress she wore to the Brits in 2007 was an It piece of the time also worn by Gwyneth Paltrow, but Winehouse, with her black bra on display, and contrasting red heart shaped Moschino handbag made it entirely singular. There was nothing “Gucci-bag crew” about Amy.
There was nothing “Gucci-bag crew” about Amy
In celebrity death, of course, comes industry. Dying stars leave a lucrative chasm of opportunity. Seeing Marisa Abela caricatured into Winehouse in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film Back to Black (which premieres tonight), drawn-on tattoos, towering beehive, thick eyeliner, low-slung skinny jeans and peep-toe heels, feels jarringly too soon. But where is the line between honouring a legacy and exploiting it?
In 2021, her family and friends auctioned off everything from her Bums and Tums exercise books to her bras, half-used bath oil, and hair brushes as well as that Moschino handbag, with proceeds going to The Amy Winehouse Foundation. It may have benefitted the charity, but the scope of items (some of which have appeared again on eBay — a pair of her old pink ballet pumps are on sale for £7,500) from the mundane to the incredibly personal felt brutally exposing. Her father Mitch Winehouse is currently suing two of her closest friends, Catriona Gourlay, her old flatmate, and Naomi Parry, her stylist, for more than £730,000 alleging they have profited from selling the late singer’s personal property. Last year, her hairstylist Tracey Cahoon auctioned off the wig Amy wore in her You Know I’m No Good video.
The horrendous tragedy of Winehouse’s story permeates through the two documentaries so far released and Taylor-Johnson’s new biopic. The mess of addiction, bulimia, youth, love, obsession, blistering talent all set to the backing track of business. From record companies to paparazzi and tabloid spin, it was always a monetised mess for someone. Was any of it really for Amy? It’s impossible to remember her without the drama surrounding her far too short life, but her memory deserves more than a zoomed-in shot of a dirtied and bloodied ballet shoe.
