Back To Black

BACK TO BLACK
Amy Winehouse
2006

This is the perfect Friday night record. Or Sunday morning. Or really at any given moment in your life. I never, ever ever get sick of it. The first time I heard this I couldn't get over how good it was. I still can't. If you've never heard it before, don't waste another second. If you have, listen to it again. Every song, every word.. Motown for the Millennium. Amy Winehouse is younger than me. This is always disturbing to me. I love seeing pictures of her with her beehive and tight cropped stonewashed jeans and flats, those big black eyes. On the beach in St. Lucia. Don't ever change, Amy.

Amy's influences for this album were apparently The Shangri-La's and The Specials. It sounds like it. I can also hear a little bit of Tracey Emin and Nigella Lawson. Hell, Back To Black is so good that Ronnie goddamn Spector even covered it! There has not been so much pure drama in a song for at least 40 years. Amy's vocals are incredible, her voice has so much personality and so much gin and so much worldwear in it. Mark Ronson makes everything sound so crisp- a throwback, but entirely now. The songs are so well-written and the whole album is strung together (out) so perfectly. It feels so short, so concise, nothing unncessary. Songs end without warning. It's of course a shame that most people will only know Rehab. But nothing can quite come close to the real-life brilliance of her lyrics. Here are my favorites:

You shrug and it's the worst, who truly stuck the knife in first?

What kind of fuckery is this?

Nowadays you don't mean dick to me, I might let you make it up to me, who's playing Saturday?

I love you much, it's not enough, you love blow and I love puff.

I shouldn't play myself again, I should just be my own best friend, not fuck myself in the head with stupid men.

Your shadow covers me, the sky above, a blaze that only lovers see.

He gets fierce in my dreams seizing my guts, he floors me with dread.

I can't wait to hear Amy's next album. I have every confidence in it. I would love to see her record an album of duets with Peter Doherty and call it BLACKOUT/TRUE LOVE. The best beat on the whole album comes in on He Can Only Hold Her. Pure dubbed out Stax bliss. Cause what's inside her never dies.