Music, Please, Re-posted

 I wrote this originally in 2008 after listening for the millionth time to the Back to Black album.  I thought I'd post again on the day Amy Winehouse was found dead.  I'm a little distressed about how much of a joke she has become only hours after her death... not because of anything about her, but because no one deserves to be ridiculed for having serious addiction issues.  I stand by the fact that the Back to Black album is one of the best pieces of music released in a decade.  So there.



On my way home from work today, I was listening to Aesop Rock. He was, for many years, my favorite rapper. His lyrics are poetic to a fault (way past the line of comprehension or the sparseness that so often makes rap lyrics more powerful than prose or written words, but not so far that I won't follow him there), his beats are okay, but not nearly dusty enough to match his voice. Can a beat be dusty? He needs more dust in there, and space. I guess I think rap needs lots of spaces to be really good.

I was listening to Aesop Rock, and after skipping wildly through his 'Labor Days' album, which actually has pretty decent spacing, and far dustier beats, I decided I wanted to listen to 'Float', since somewhere on there is the line "I'm just a survivor of the wooly mammoth population bottle neck effect," which is a line I could listen to over and over and over again and grow increasingly calm and happy with myself for being a scruffy guy.

After turning from one highway to another, seeing the snow around the water of Theodore Wirth Lake (pond?), I decided I wanted some singing. Some days I feel like singing. Let me clarify: I never, ever feel like singing myself, but I sometimes feel like listening to singing. Today, after seeing the lake (pond?) I felt like singing. I did that stupid and dangerous and all-too-common thing of scrolling through my Mp3 player to look for some singing. The next singer down my list was Amy Winehouse.

Why not?

Now. Amy Winehouse has gotten a lot of shit since she released 'Back to Black.' By the time I had heard it (yes, and loved it), and by the time I had put it on during a small dinner party at my house, there was already one uber-hip friend who had to sigh audibly as it started, and when pressed as to why, in god's name, she could possibly dislike this album, said with yet another sigh of exasperation, "I've just had a little too much Amy Winehouse lately." This friend must have had a hard six or seven months. This was before major radio play, before grammygrammygrammy's, before tabloids, before Amy Winehouse became known more for being Amy Winehouse than for being a musician.

It's not cool to like Amy Winehouse anymore. She's a joke. People hear about bad things happening to her, or her doing bad things, and they laugh, or they shrug and get sad about it. They say, "so sad," or "look at how skinny she is," or "she's just hideous now." I guess I've said all of those things. The problem is that while we've been saying all these things, it seems like everyone stopped listening to her. We felt guilty for supporting her habit mainly, or we heard the songs one too many times, or we just couldn't take her seriously after seeing one (or twenty) too many embarrassing pictures.

We've all had too much Amy Winehouse. She's a tabloid figurine now, famous for being famous for being fucked up.

By all accounts, she is certainly fucked up.

I listened to 'Back to Black' today, for the god-knows-howmanyth-time, but the first in god-knows-how-long, and listened to her voice wrap itself around and through sounds and words and feelings and push sex and coyness and anger out. I listened to her sing sadness to and ex for getting his dick wet in a way that was crushingly playful. I heard her use the word "fuckery" in a song, over and over, without it sounding ridiculous or overly silly. I listened to a backing band wound like a clock, running tight through every track, dancing with that sultry, strong voice, and having sense enough to let it lead. I got straight-up-stupidly poetic about it. I listened to one hell of a good album. I mean, really, a really fucking good album.

I don't get it. Are Amy Winehouse's problems so much worse than Kurt Cobain's? How come his drug problems made him a romantic genius? How come her drug problems make her a trashy joke? How come his problems add depth to his music, and her problems take depth away? Is it because we're not over the joke yet that, despite what her single says, she ought to go to rehab? Is it because, for a short short time, she was just about all anyone could think about when they had sex, and we love to laugh at sex symbols getting ugly (not that Cobain wasn't a sex symbol, but his whole DEAL was being ugly, so getting strung out only helped things)?

I'm going to go ahead and call shenanigans on how much we hate Amy Winehouse now. Shenanigans. I want an inquiry. I want the Senate involved. It's time to stop being so shocked that a musician has a drug problem. Time to stop laughing at her for gaudy makeup and silly outfits and saying, "how can she think that looks good?" Or, hell, before I sound too much like that kid in the youtube video screaming for everyone to leave Britney alone, go ahead and make fun of Winehouse all you want, but, for fuck's sake, leave her album out of it.