There was no magic wand that would make me feel better overnight, no matter how much I wanted one. At 15 years old, I was kept off school for a month, and effectively just had to lie down. Ten years ago I had a freak accident: I slipped over running for a bus and landed on my back, resulting in a crush fracture of two of my vertebrae. And when Amy sang, she was the only person in the whole world that knew what it was,” Buchanan tells Soul Music.īuchanan tells BBC Culture that Back to Black was released at a time in her life when she was feeling very lost: “It seemed as though everybody else around me was getting it right, and I was getting it wrong.”īack to Black has its own personal significance for me. I felt as though I had some undiagnosed emotional ailment. Unhappy in her job and in a destructive relationship: “I felt as though my heart was aching. When author and journalist Daisy Buchanan moved to London in 2007 after graduating from university she was drawn to Winehouse’s music. Brackett, the author of Back to Black: Amy Winehouse’s Only Masterpiece explains that having to continue to perform this song – and album – was to relive the trauma of her break-up. Inspired by the girl groups of the 1950s and ’60s “she devoted herself to trying to make people happy, by her being sorrowful, melancholy, sad,” Donald Brackett tells BBC Radio 4’s Soul Music. While it didn’t enjoy the huge success of Rehab, it still reached number eight in the UK charts, went platinum in the UK in 2017, and became an emotional touchstone for many. Strange Fruit: The most shocking song of all time?īack to Black was released as a single in April 2007, after first appearing on her second album of the same name. Fight the Power: The most provocative song ever Why Janet Jackson is pop's most underrated legend Fans found they could put their own meaning onto her words, creating a deeply personal relationship with this ultimately tragic hero. Her playful and agonising poetry put her heart on her sleeve for the world to see. Her vocals were unrivalled by her peers, but it was her songwriting that put her head and shoulders above the crowd as a musician. A masterpiece of modern pop, Back to Black is astonishingly sad, overwhelming the listener with its haunting lyrics and melody.Īmy Winehouse was undoubtedly talented funny, smart and expressive too. In it, you can hear the strains of Baby Love by The Supremes, but it is also a total one-off.
It starts startlingly simply, with just a piano and a drum, thumping blissfully into that tune you’ve heard perhaps hundreds of times before.