Pop singer Amy Winehouse, 27

Amy Winehouse, 27, the Grammy Award-winning pop singer-songwriter whose sultry and profane compositions reflected - and ultimately were overshadowed by - a turbulent personal life and struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, was found dead Saturday at her apartment in London.

Police sources confirmed her death, but the cause was not immediately available.

The British-born performer's train-wreck-style public behavior often threatened to eclipse her talent. Although she had high-profile engagements, such as Nelson Mandela's 90th-birthday concert at London's Hyde Park in 2008, she routinely canceled or missed many.

In June, Ms. Winehouse canceled a tour after shouting "Hello, Athens!" to an audience of 20,000 in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. She appeared to be so intoxicated that backup singers had to sing her parts when she proved incapable. She was ultimately booed off the stage.

Ms. Winehouse often said that living dangerously generated her creativity, and she was often photographed half-dressed, wild-eyed, and disheveled.

The English tabloids reported she had suffered brain damage from drugs and alcohol.

"I need to get some headaches going to write about," she once said.

Her reckless life often called to mind doomed pop stars of earlier generations, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain - all of whom also died at 27.

She had a fondness for jazz-inflected vocals and 1960s pop, but she roughed up the style to include hip-hop slang and an infusion of profanity. Her music often focused on drinking, drug-taking, and chronic infidelity.

Her song "Rehab" mirrored her life in its defiant lyrics: "They tried to make me go to rehab / I said no, no, no." The bouncy song, styled after the early Motown sound and 1960s girl groups, became a hit in 2007.

Amid the chaos and turmoil of her personal life, Ms. Winehouse won five Grammy Awards in 2008, including best new artist. She also won for song of the year and best female pop vocal performance for "Rehab," as well as record of the year and best pop vocal album for her CD Back to Black.

Music critic Chuck Arnold wrote of Back to Black in People magazine that Ms. Winehouse "turns a righteous girl-group groove into a rebellious bad-girl anthem, as if Courtney Love has crashed Martha and the Vandellas."

New York Times music reviewer Jon Pareles wrote of her May 2007 appearance at Manhattan's Highline Ballroom, "Her voice glints with possibility: tart, smoky, ready to flirt or sob, and capable of the jazzy timing of a Dinah Washington or the declamation of soul singers like Martha Reeves and Carla Thomas.

"What she doesn't have, and may not want, is the kind of focus the older singers brought to their songs," he wrote, adding that her performance "switched between confession and indifference."

Ms. Winehouse was barely out of her teens when she reached the top of the music charts in England with her debut disc, Frank (2003). The album was released in the United States in 2006. Although the title alluded to Frank Sinatra, it could also have been a reference to Ms. Winehouse's libido-charged lyrics. In interviews, her candid remarks often alluded to a promiscuous sex life.

"October Song" eulogized her dead canary, which she buried in a Chanel sunglasses box. In addition to her original songs, her debut album included two jazz standards, "There is No Greater Love," in which she channeled another drug-haunted singer, Billie Holiday, and "Moody's Mood for Love." Another of her original songs, "Stronger Than Me," won the Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary song from the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.

In May 2007, Ms. Winehouse flew to Miami and secretly married Blake Fielder-Civil, an admitted heroin and crack user.

Her father, Mitch Winehouse, told reporters his daughter - once plump but later skeletally thin - had an eating disorder. He said his daughter and Fielder-Civil were heroin addicts who deliberately cut themselves as a distraction from the pain of drug withdrawal.