Tuesday, December 18, 2007

In the year of the scavenger, the season of the bitch

"Troubled Amy Winehouse Arrested."

I think we're now obligated to use the adjective "troubled" every time we write anything about Amy Winehouse. "Troubled Amy Winehouse Releases New Single", "Troubled Amy Winehouse Loses her Car Keys", etc. etc. She can't really complain about it. She told us she was troubled.

Yeah, well so were Iggy and Mick and Bowie at one time. That's not what matters years after the fact; what we care about is that they made some great music. The rest is interesting trivia. (I do think that Jagger fucking Bowie was as historically significant an event as the first A-bomb explosion. But that's just me.)

And the music is what surprises me about Amy Winehouse. After a decade of hearing about the drug habits of the rich and talentless, it's a shock to find out that the "troubled" pop singer is actually making really goddamn good music. Wait! You mean, all this time, instead of listening to tin-voiced, overdubbed, plastic, pop-tart junkies singing other people's songs on the radio we could have been listening to a junkie with some real talent singing her own material? And recording the sort of music that sounds like the missing link between the Shangri-Las and Erykah Badu? Holy Moses!

Anyway, I think she's got real lasting diva potential, provided she doesn't kill herself.

Here's what I mean:
You know I'm no Good
Love is a Losing Game
Back to Black
Rehab
Valerie
F*** Me Pumps
What is it About Men?
Addicted
Some Unholy War
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

8 comments:

Holly said...

Sorry, man. She's not gonna make it.

Rufus said...

You think she's dead meat?

Holly said...

Every single time I see her in the news, which is pretty often, I think of Janis Joplin. Obviously, I'm not psychic, but it doesn't take a psychic to see that she'd need the kind of salvation that's really hard to come by. She might be more together than she seems (??) but really, she comes across as the poster child for how ODs happen.

Rufus said...

Yeah, I'd say there's a decent chance that she'll wind up in Janis Joplinville. But she might end up like Judy Garland and just drag out the inevitable for years and years. I could actually see her playing to throngs of psychotically-admiring gay men in Vegas. The other problem is that alcohol screws up your voice after a while, and heroin ages you terribly. In recent pictures, she looks a lot older than 24.

Greg von Winckel said...

She looks older than us!

Rufus said...

That's true- heroin does that. Look at Lou Reed- he was already older than the hills when he was in the Velvet Underground.

It's hard to figure if she'll OD or not. I've been expecting Courtney Love to die for years now, and she just keeps coming back like Jason Voorhees.

Greg von Winckel said...

I thought there was a minimum talent level need to OD on heroin.

Rufus said...

I guess that would explain Courtney's invulnerability. I know someone who works at a magazine that interviewed Ms. Love, and she claimed that all of the photoshopping that they did to the photos they took of her was involved with removing the numerous track marks from her arms and legs.