You're no cooler than the rest of us by criticising the work of a dead woman.

Only just read this. I assume 'never, ever' has to be pronounced 'nevar, evar'.

Winehouse let us down in the sense that she played her intended role pretty much without a single surprise. In this sense, she perhaps created no expectations in me to actually disappoint. When she first started, it was pretty clear she was annointing herself for a relationship with sacrifice and death - which is primarily the essence of 'the iconic' star: to always be placed somewhere near to the limit of death; die for a cause, die for your art, die for your own tortuous emotional life.

The difference, I guess, between Doherty and Winehouse is that Pete appears to be a far less authentic version of this process. Winehouse - at least for a short while - had a soul and heart; Pete is mostly a rockstar simulation, and not a particularly good one. Winehouse was indeed a talent and made a great album. Tis just a shame she couldn't have been as creative with her ideas about iconic living.

The media knows what sells. A lot of consumers do not care what a rock star or pop star sounds like. The more disastrous the lifestyle the better. It's all about presentation. The Tories know this fact well.
Whether Jimi Hendrix was a great guitarist or not he could not draw a following until he put on a public exhibition of smashing his instrument .
At one of his performances, Alice Cooper, was it, bit the head off a live chicken. Man he really could rock.
British rock bands had to keep throwing television sets out of hotel windows to awe their slack brained fans and keep them buying the product.
Davey Jones had his nose broken mixing it with former heavy-weight champ Sonny LIston. Yea, Sonny was meant to go into the tank - that is according to rock rules. Virtual reality has been around for some time

Who's Artie Shaw?

Amy Winehouse - not my cup of tea to be honest. Bought her first album on the back of some rave reviews but was disappointed - a couple of tracks were ok I thought, but overall nothing to write home about in my opinion. But thats just me.

Icon? Legend? Genius? Hero? Hmmmm ..I dunno about that? These terms get banded about far too easily these days I think.

Waster? - definitely! lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT7Lo-jd7KE&feature=related

Another case of someone dying early and then everying pretending they were better and worthier than they actually were.

Feminist message of the day - "You too can grow up to die early after years of a horrific life at the hands of drink and drugs."

Say what you want about plastic, rubbish girl groups, most of them don't die alone of drug overdoses at 27.

Are you Limeys still crying over that drug-addled SKANK??? I haven't heard you all cry for this long since we killed bin Laden! LOL

What a fantastic voice and delivered with such passion, what a great loss.. Not just to Amy's family, but to all those who love great music.

Borderline personality disorder. People with BPD rarely survive till old age. No surprise. I've dealt with hundreds. She was a pop singer. Full stop.

I'm not sure how often the "good role model" motif came up, Laurie: if it did, it would only have been at the level of Daily Mail letter writers. Her audience wasn't children. I think we have an incredibly unhealthy celebrity culture that manages to combine adulation and schadenfreude-Amy Winehouse was a victim of that, but she wasn't the first and she won't be the last.

And she did make choices, Iden-perfectly rational ones. People take drugs because they enjoy it, and decide that the short term gain justifies the long term risk. Every decision any sane person makes is on a completely rational basis-every choice meets a need. You might not be able to verbalise-let alone rationalise-the need, but it's still there. If I decide to give up smoking after thirty years on the tabs, is that because I'm programmed to smoke for three decades? Isn't it more likely that it's because I realise that I'm riding my luck, and take a conscious decision that some short term discomfort will be worth it in the long run?

Nice tribute article Laurie. Only just got to it.

I liked Winehouse. She had a rich if heavy voice, and some of her songs are very catchy. Pity no full third album - will anything posthumously be released?

Trofim: what is your profession and how did you meet hundreds of BPDs?

amy was my hero,,but what annoys me now is where is pete docherys tribute to amy,,is the likes of him not to blame for the downfall of amy..his silence is deafeaning since amys death...anyway rip amy...she will be in good company in rock and roll heaven ie keith moon,,jimi hendrix..etc etc...

worshipping at the altar of celebrity culture gets us nowhere and serves only to damage political movements, you think the average oppressed woman on the streets in the UK can relate to or even dream of being like Winehouse (or indeed should do so?), of course they cannot, people generally only get media attention when they represent what the media want us to worship, not because of any difference or talent, heck people who make a difference are generally not mainstream or tabloid love children. This is a very dissapointing article, its reactionary to her death, dellusional about her influence and falls prey to the kind of blind adulation for a person that the Right relishes in and the Left would do well to avoid at all costs.

Humans do have free will. And AW exercised hers by doing drugs. I have no respect for someone who abused themselves by choice, and then died as a result.

motown jazz retead was Ms Winehouse. Your points are well made but a tad revisionist, I understand a woman maligned but what a waster

She was just another drug F***ed person who could sing, I'm sick of hearing Amy Winehouse,
what about the names of all those who died serving in the armed forces no one seems to wory about them..

If modern science permitted one could say she was sometimes possessed. Extraordinary girl. Worth digging around Youtube for sublime clips unavailable elsewhere.

not to mention the title 'A.W never let us down' ... no ? Ask the many paying audiences who saw her stagger on stage unable to give the performance they had come & paid for !!! L Pennie should get a grip once in a while, even if , in her distorted view, a woman can do no wrong (or if she does, must somewhere be a man's fault!)

Best since then?

Well, there's been many, many, since then, but just for starters off the top of my head, Sharon Jones is a contender, whose band was borrowed for Back To Black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ouI5KcyHfE

Someone explain to me why she isn't as widely lauded and known as Amy? She's never let me down, either.

I in no way feel morally judgemental about Amy's lifestyle, she made some poor choices, had some bad guidance, was hounded by the press and tragically paid an awful price for pursuing her art, as many have done. I don't really doubt her integrity, just couldn't stand the way she sang, thought she was a bit over-rated and am tired of the over-eulogising about our princess-soul-singer-of-hearts. Knew it was inevitable though.

Your comments on gossip press reminds me of that South Park episodes where they reveal that people need to sacrifice famous young women to grow good corn!

That said, I'm still on my campaign to try to find a pop music article or review which actually mentions *chords* or anything else music-related. That just confirms my belief that there is nothing musical about pop music anymore, and that classical music is today the alternative, revolutionary and anti-system musical expression that rock once was.

(Pop music is still art, of course, but not music per se - something like media art meets performance meets poetry meets dance?)

I was no fan of Winehouse (not my genre at all) however even a snearing, cynical contrarian like me could appreciate the organic brilliance of her voice. Regarding her lifestyle and untimely death, I feel that the holier than thou "I told you so" brigade are even more devoid of taste than those queing up to deliver the usual posthumous platitudes. Plenty of us have used alcohol less than responibly, so we'll have no lectures on sobriety from the nay-sayers thanks very much.

On this occasion I have to disagree with Laurie. Are we seriously arguing that AW is ranked up there with the soul greats such as Marvin Gaye,Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. I believe that whatever talent AW had was sqaundered in pursuit of a hedonistic lifestyle of drug and alcohol abuse. AW chose this life and it for this reason we should not hold her up as some iconic persona. AW had access to the finest medical care and yet chose the path of self destruction. As for the idea that somehow she came off drink three weeks before her untimely death is all part of the family's refusal to believe their daughter had serious addiction problems. I believe that the proceeds of her estate should go to a drugs charity to save people who otherwise cannot afford expensive medical addiction programmes.

I'm afraid I agree with maxinemf. It's a sad story of addiction and wasted talent.

No doubt insecurity played a large part in her dependencies (and fame exacerbated that), but we must acknowledge that her lifestyle was in part down to the choices that she herself made. It troubles me that very young girls idiolised her and were inadvertently exposed to her lifestyle (although this is an unfortunate by product of our times).

But the iconic label is problematic for me. Forgive me for saying this, but her look and styling were not her own, although she wore them with panache, and I feel the same about her music, brilliant singer/songwriter that she was. The sad thing for me is to see a talented young women not fullfill her own potential.

I think the points about the media are well observed and fair enough, but I do tend towards the view that we get the media we deserve. Ergo, criticisms of the media also point to more general problems with our society.

At one end of the scale are people who resent success and who are only to happy to indulge in some schadenfreude when successful people fall apart. This is why the red tops that chronicled every one of Amy's lows were, and remain, so successful. People liked reading about it.

But it's not just about the red tops. At the other end of the scale are those who live vicariously through others' excesses, those of us who celebrated and lauded Amy's shambolic lifestyle because it satisfied our idea of how a "proper" rock star should behave, or because she met our need for larger-than-life female icons who defy or subvert gender stereotypes. Too little regard was given to the pernicious effects of living that way.

I suppose the point I'm stuttering towards here is this: both Amy's admirers and detractors had a tendency to see her as an abstraction (an icon, a symbol, a cartoon character?) rather than a living, breathing and fragile human being. Our media merely reflected and reinforced that.

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