Amy Winehouse on the cover of Back To Black
Photo: Universal. All rights reserved.
10th place: Amy Winehouse with “Back To Black” (2006)
Amy Winehouse goes from a London insider tip to a world star. Jazz and ska are passé for now. Traditional school R&B arrives with her in the new millennium. The girl group soul of the 1960s is the inspiration. Songs like “Rehab” (alcohol) or “Love Is A Losing Game” (heart/pain) connect the music with their rough private life between euphoria and crash. A true, wild life tragically close to the “Live fast, die young” cliché of rock’n’roll that makes her presentation so unique.
And as is usually the case in big pop moments, style plays an important role: the towering beehive hairstyle, her tattoos in the videos. A bittersweet combo that the producer duo dresses in an organically light-footed sound. Salaam Remi was already on the debut, “Frank”. Now he is being supported by Mark Ronson from New York, who has already been able to sniff mainstream air with big caliber artists such as Christina Aguilera or Robbie Williams via his DJ deck.
Remi’s “Tears Dry On Their Own” copies the sound school of the Motown label with a melancholic greeting. Ronson, on the other hand, relies on coherent arrangements that support Winehouse’s fickle, self-destructive aura. “We only said goodbye with words/ I died a hundred times/ You go back to her/ And I go back to black,” the title song says somberly. This anticipates her perpetual crisis, from which she cannot find her way out, despite all the recognition with Grammy Awards and millions in sales.- Winehouse dies in July 2011 at the age of 27 from a fatal cocktail of pills and liquor.
Ralf Niemczyk