What we said about Winehouse in 2007

What we said about Amy Winehouse after her breakout album, Back to Black, appeared in 2007:

At the South by Southwest Music Festival (March 20, 2007)

When I asked people who they were hoping to see in Austin, nearly everyone answered with what a hypester at La Zona Rosa on Friday deemed "two of the most exciting words in the English language right now": Amy Winehouse.

Was it worth the buildup? You betcha. Winehouse, who is scheduled to play the TLA on May 6, came out in her Vampirella 'do and Cleopatra eye shadow, tattoos of a naked woman and a horseshoe on her emaciated left arm. Behind her was a crack band with three horns and two shimmying male backup singers, each of whom got a solo turn on Lauryn Hill's "That Thing."

The band was borrowed from Sharon Jones, but the songs are Winehouse's own. And the songs made the sale.

She expertly wields her smokehouse voice, slurring vocals for emotional effect, not because she's drinking Guinness. And in "Rehab," as well as "Love Is a Losing Game," the Billy Paul update "Me & Mr. Jones," and, especially, "You Know I'm No Good," she displayed that rarest of knacks - for writing deeply personal yet universal songs in a timeless idiom.

She's savvy enough to lead you to the unmistakable conclusion that she's mad, bad, and dangerous to know. And the pleasure, and conviction with which she sang "I cheated myself, like I knew I would / I told you I was trouble, you know I'm no good" make you worry that when the train wreck comes, you're not going to be able to look away.

- Dan DeLuca,
Inquirer music critic
At the Electric Factory (May 7, 2007)

Elizabeth II enjoyed the Kentucky Derby, but the real queen of England was at the Electric Factory on Saturday night.

Her name is Amy Winehouse, and she is nothing short of a nouveau soul sensation. Her breakthrough album, Back to Black, with its clever postmodern amalgam of '60s soul, Motown, and Spectorian girl groups, is currently blowing up in all formats.

Before the show, the sold-out crowd at the Electric Factory just kept their fingers crossed that Winehouse would show - Fleet Street, in its inimitable tradition of creating media icons and then destroying them, currently is painting Winehouse as boozy and unstable - but she not only showed up, she showed plenty:

Dressed in skimpy daisy dukes, a flimsy white tank top, tattoos, and a magnificent, towering cascade of hair arranged in a style not seen since the Shangri-Las sang "Leader of the Pack."

Like her music, Winehouse cuts a striking but elusive profile, petite but streetwise, retro yet thoroughly modern; with her exotic features she could pass for black or white, Arab or Asian. All of which seemed to be represented in the Factory crowd, which, unprompted, joined the star in a joyful sing-along of the unprintable rhetorical question that opened "Me & Mr. Jones," her rendition of the Billy Paul hit.

In short, this was a party.

Winehouse, who spoke in a semi-intelligible Cockney mumble between songs, made light of her reputation as an unrepentant juicer, joking that she got into trouble at sound check for breaking into the upstairs bar and liberating a bottle of tequila.

She was backed by an impeccable 10-piece band, including a horn section and two suave, caramel-skinned gentlemen in dapper three-button suits singing backup and shimmying Motown-style.

Winehouse was in fine voice, her phrasing was spot-on, and the range and control she demonstrates on record - from black-leather belting to blue-velvet crooning - were undiminished.

My only complaint is that she rushed her phrasing through "Rehab," her breakthrough hit. She seemed to fully inhabit every other song as if she lived them, but "Rehab" sounded a little vacant - like an old house she moved out of a long time ago.

- Jonathan Valania,
For The Inquirer