The story of Amy Winehouse

A jazz family in north London

Amy Jade Winehouse was born on the fourteenth of September 1983 at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, north London, and grew up in nearby Southgate. Her father Mitch was a taxi driver and a keen amateur singer. Her mother Janis was a pharmacist. She had one sibling, her brother Alex, four years older. The family was Jewish, and Amy went to a weekly Hebrew school as a child, which she later admitted she hated, begging her dad to let her stay home. She was not religious as an adult, but she was proud of her roots, and she often performed wearing a Star of David pendant.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Music ran through both sides of the family. Several of her mother's brothers were professional jazz musicians. Her father's mother, Cynthia, had been a singer herself and had once dated the saxophonist Ronnie Scott, founder of the famous Soho jazz club. Mitch sang Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett songs around the house, and the records on the player were Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington. Amy absorbed it early. When she was sent to see the headmistress at school for misbehaving, she would sing Fly Me to the Moon on her way in.[1] [2]

Her parents separated when she was nine. Amy moved with her mother to Whetstone and spent weekends with her father in Essex. Her grandmother Cynthia, the steady figure in her life, pushed her toward the stage, and around then Amy began spending her Saturdays at the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, learning singing, acting and tap. Her own taste at that age was not jazz at all. She loved Madonna until she was about eleven, then discovered Salt-N-Pepa and TLC. With her best friend Juliette Ashby she formed a tiny rap duo called Sweet 'n' Sour. Amy, naturally, was Sour.[1] [2] [3]

Next came the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London, where she auditioned by singing On the Sunny Side of the Street. Her time there ended early, though how is still argued about. She moved on to the Mount School in Mill Hill and spent a short spell at the BRIT School in Croydon. At home, her brother Alex's record collection was an education. She later remembered hearing Thelonious Monk through his bedroom wall, and bursting in to ask who was singing when he played Ray Charles. She then listened to nothing but Ray Charles for three months. Around fifteen she bought her own guitar, and soon she was writing songs.[1] [2] [3]

The secret singer

As a teenager Amy took whatever work came along. For a while she was an entertainment journalist at the World Entertainment News Network in London, and she sang with a local group called the Bolsha Band. In July 2000 she became a featured vocalist with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, falling for Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. Years later she said that one orchestra gig was her first and last, because a manager heard her and offered her studio time to go and write songs instead. A home video from that period, of a sixteen year old Amy singing Moon River, turned up years later in the documentary Amy.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The break came through a friend. Her best friend, the soul singer Tyler James, passed a cassette of her singing to people at the management company Brilliant, which was funded by Simon Fuller's 19 group. Her manager Nick Godwin later remembered an amazing voice, long songs that were more like poems, and quite awkward guitar playing. In 2002 she signed with 19 Management, which paid her 250 pounds a week against future earnings. Her first manager, Nick Shymansky, became one of the most important people in her early career. Amy was cheerfully rude about Fuller in interviews, insisting he could not mess with her.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For a while Amy was kept as an industry secret, while she sang jazz standards at the Cobden Club in west London. Then Darcus Beese, a talent scout at Island Records, heard her voice by accident on some productions played to him by the manager of another act. He asked who the singer was and was told he was not allowed to know. It took Beese months of asking around to find her name. By then she had already signed a publishing deal with EMI and started working with the New York producer Salaam Remi, who had made hits for the Fugees and Ms. Dynamite.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Beese brought her to his boss at Island, Nick Gatfield, a former saxophonist with Dexys Midnight Runners, who shared his excitement. EMI and Virgin were starting to circle, but Island signed her in 2002. Beese felt the buzz around such an unusual young singer was partly a reaction against reality television talent shows, and a hunger for something that felt real. Footage from her audition at Island in February 2003, singing her own song about infidelity, was later shown in the film Amy. She was nineteen, and about to make a jazz record in an age of manufactured pop.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Frank, and a singer who hated her own album

Her debut album, Frank, came out on the twentieth of October 2003. Most of it was produced by Salaam Remi, much of it in Miami, and apart from two cover versions Amy co-wrote every song. The title nodded to how blunt her lyrics were, and also to Frank Sinatra. One co-writer, Felix Howard, remembered her turning up to their first session in ragged jeans with the words I Love Sinatra stitched on the seat. The songs were mostly about one ex-boyfriend, a man named Chris Taylor, and the album was dedicated to him. Critics compared her to Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone and Erykah Badu, and marvelled that she was only nineteen.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Frank climbed slowly. It reached number thirteen in the UK in early 2004, when Amy was nominated for two Brit Awards, as best British female and best urban act. The album went platinum and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. The lead single, Stronger Than Me, only reached number seventy one, the lowest chart placing of her whole career, yet it won her and Remi the Ivor Novello Award for best contemporary song. That summer she played Glastonbury on the Jazz World stage, the V Festival and the Montreal International Jazz Festival.[1] [2] [3]

Amy was not grateful. She told The Observer she was only eighty percent behind the album, because Island had overruled her choice of songs and mixes. She said she had never listened to Frank from start to finish and did not keep a copy at home. She called the marketing and promotion a shambles, and described the people she worked with as nice idiots. Most young artists would have been dropped for less. Instead her bluntness became part of her appeal, and she added that if she heard somebody else singing like her, she would buy the record in a heartbeat.[1] [2] [3]

She was already living in Camden Town, where she bought a flat at Jeffrey's Place in 2003, and she drank at the Hawley Arms and other local pubs. In 2005 things began to go wrong. By her family's account she went through a period of heavy drinking, drug use and weight loss that year. Her management urged her to go to a rehabilitation clinic, and after a talk with her father she refused. It was also in Camden that she fell for a music video assistant from Lincolnshire named Blake Fielder-Civil. The heartbreak that followed would become her masterpiece.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Heartbreak into Back to Black

Blake Fielder-Civil had left Bourne Grammar School and moved to London at sixteen. He and Amy spent long nights in a Camden bar, playing pool and feeding the jukebox with sixties girl groups, blues and Motown. She said later that when she fell in love with Blake there was sixties music all around them. Then he left her to go back to a previous girlfriend. Amy fell apart, and wrote. The songs she wrote during that break, about guilt, grief and infidelity, became most of her second album. For a short time in 2006 she dated the musician Alex Clare, who years later had a hit with Too Close.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The first part of the album was made with Salaam Remi in Miami, at his Instrumental Zoo studio. Amy would sing and play guitar, and Remi filled in most of the other instruments himself. Songs like Tears Dry on Their Own, Me and Mr Jones and Some Unholy War came from those sessions. Tears Dry on Their Own borrows its chord progression from the Motown duet Ain't No Mountain High Enough, turning a joyful love song into a lecture she gave herself. Miami also changed her look. The bold red lipstick, thick brows and heavy eyeliner came from Latina women she saw there.[1] [2] [3]

In March 2006 she met Mark Ronson in his New York studio. She had assumed he would be an older man with a beard. She told him she liked playing pool with her boyfriend and listening to the Shangri-Las. That night Ronson wrote a piano part that became the verse of Back to Black, and the next day they started work. On a walk around the neighbourhood, Amy told him how her dad had tried to make her go to rehab and she had said no. Ronson heard a hook immediately and hurried her back to the studio to turn that line into a song.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ronson wanted a real sixties sound, so he played Amy a record by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the house band of Brooklyn's Daptone Records. She loved it. By the time the band gathered at Daptone's studio, Amy had already flown home, so they recorded the backing tracks from Ronson's demos, often with the drums picked up by a single microphone. Ronson later called them the best rhythm section he had ever worked with. Strings and horns were added in London, and the album was mixed by Tom Elmhirst. Ronson and Remi split the production almost exactly in half.[1] [2]

Amy guarded her words fiercely. When Ronson pointed out that one line in the chorus of Back to Black did not rhyme and asked her to fix it, she looked at him as if he were mad, because that was simply what had come out. Another song began life with a swear word as its title, and Darcus Beese at Island persuaded her to rename it Me and Mr Jones. It was about the rapper Nas, a close friend, whose surname is Jones. The finished album was eleven songs, completed in about five months.[1] [2]

Rehab and the world takes notice

Back to Black came out on the twenty seventh of October 2006. Rehab, released the same month, reached number seven in the UK, by far her biggest hit up to then. The album entered the UK chart at number three and reached number one in January 2007. At the 2007 Brit Awards Amy won the award for best British female solo artist. Her brother Alex remembered bumping into her alone on the Tube shortly before, and said that after that one evening she could never go anywhere unnoticed again. Back to Black became the best selling album in Britain that year, with about 1.85 million copies.[1] [2] [3] [4]

America came next. The Dap-Kings backed her at Joe's Pub in New York in January 2007, with Jay-Z and Mos Def in the audience. In March she made her American television debut on the Late Show with David Letterman, and Back to Black entered the Billboard 200 at number seven, the highest debut for a British female solo artist at the time. In June, the actor Bruce Willis asked to introduce her at the MTV Movie Awards. Her performance of Rehab there sent the song to number nine on the Hot 100. Time magazine named it the best song of 2007.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In October 2007 came Valerie, her cover of a song by the Liverpool band the Zutons, recorded for Mark Ronson's album Version. The Dap-Kings spent a whole day on a slow version, then at the end of the session Ronson asked for one quick upbeat Motown take. That became the hit, built on the beat of the Jam's Town Called Malice. It reached number two in the UK and ended up as her best selling single. Rehab, meanwhile, won the Ivor Novello Award in May 2007. The girl who said she hated her first album was now the most talked about singer in Britain.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her private life was spinning at the same speed. Amy and Blake got back together, and on the eighteenth of May 2007 they married at a registry office in Miami Beach. She had his name tattooed over her heart. Within weeks the tabloids were full of them. In a June 2007 interview she admitted she could turn violent towards Blake when drinking. In August they were photographed bloodied and bruised after an apparent fight, though she said her injuries were self inflicted. Blake was later quoted in a tabloid saying he had introduced her to crack cocaine and heroin, and her brother believed the same.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Grammys in the middle of the storm

In August 2007 Amy was taken to hospital after what was reported as an overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol. Shows were cancelled, and she and Blake checked into rehab together but left within days. In October they were arrested in Bergen, Norway, for possessing seven grams of cannabis and fined. In November Blake was arrested and held on remand over an assault on a pub landlord in east London, and a plot to pay the man not to testify. That month the opening night of her UK tour in Birmingham ended in booing and walkouts, and she cancelled all remaining shows for the year.[1] [2] [3]

In January 2008 The Sun published video of Amy apparently smoking crack cocaine at a party in her flat. She entered a rehabilitation clinic soon afterwards. Police later arrested her over the video but released her, and prosecutors decided they could not prove what was in the pipe. Meanwhile she had six Grammy nominations, but her American visa was not approved in time. So on the tenth of February 2008 she performed via satellite from Riverside Studios in London, at three in the morning local time. She won five Grammys, including record and song of the year for Rehab and best new artist.[1] [2] [3]

That night made history. Five wins tied what was then the record for a female artist in a single night, and made her the first British woman to win five Grammys. Accepting Record of the Year, she dedicated the award to London, adding a nod to a big fire that had just hit Camden Market. Mark Ronson won producer of the year. After the show Back to Black jumped to number two in America. A few months later she became the first artist ever to get two nominations for the top Ivor Novello songwriting award, winning for Love Is a Losing Game.[1] [2] [3]

The rest of 2008 was grim. In April she was cautioned for slapping a man in the face. In June Blake pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Prosecutors said the landlord had accepted 200,000 pounds to stay away from court, and he said the money was Amy's, which her father denied. Blake was later sentenced to twenty seven months. That same month Mitch said his daughter had early emphysema, though her publicist corrected him. She was allowed out of the London Clinic to sing at Nelson Mandela's ninetieth birthday concert in Hyde Park, and then at Glastonbury.[1] [2] [3]

The tabloids kept finding new lows. Pete Doherty posted videos of himself and Amy playing with newborn mice, using them as puppets to beg Blake not to divorce her. Another leaked video showed Amy singing a song full of racial slurs with a friend, which caused a fresh scandal. Photographs showed cuts on her arms. Mark Ronson had been due to record the theme for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace with her, but amid reports of a falling out between them the plan collapsed. Her father and manager even sought to have her detained under the Mental Health Act.[1] [2] [3] [4]

St Lucia, divorce and a different addiction

In January 2009 Amy flew to St Lucia and stayed for months, meant to be writing her third album with Salaam Remi. While she was away, her old Camden home was burgled of guitars and recording gear. She was photographed on holiday with an aspiring actor named Josh Bowman and announced she was in love again and did not need drugs. That January, Blake's lawyers served divorce papers claiming adultery, and he left prison in February. The divorce was granted in July and became final in August 2009. He received no money from it.[1] [2] [3]

According to her doctor, Amy stopped using illegal drugs in 2008. She later said she had simply woken up one day and decided she did not want to do it any more. But alcohol filled the space. Her pattern became weeks without a drink followed by heavy binges. Her GP treated her with Librium for withdrawal and anxiety, and she saw a psychologist and a psychiatrist, but she refused ongoing therapy. She worried it would damage her creativity. Her brother said she had also suffered from bulimia since her late teens, an illness she never really shook off.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her temper kept landing her in court. In 2009 she was tried for punching a dancer, Sherene Flash, in the eye backstage at a charity ball the previous September. Amy said she had only pushed the woman away because she felt scared. In July 2009 she was found not guilty, the court noting that nearly every witness had been drunk. That December she was arrested again after assaulting the front of house manager at a Cinderella pantomime in Milton Keynes, who had asked her to move seats. She pleaded guilty and was given a conditional discharge.[1] [2] [3]

There were brighter moments. She won a High Court injunction in 2009 that stopped paparazzi from following her or waiting within a hundred metres of her home. She started her own label, Lioness Records, and its first signing was her thirteen year old goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield, for whom Amy sang backing vocals on Strictly Come Dancing. From early 2010 she was in a relationship with the film director Reg Traviss, and they reportedly planned to marry. In 2010 she moved to Camden Square, designed a clothing line with Fred Perry, and recorded a cover of It's My Party with Mark Ronson for a Quincy Jones tribute album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The last year

The third album never arrived. Island kept promising it, and Amy said in 2010 it would be jukebox music, much like Back to Black, but little was finished. In January 2011 she toured Brazil, with Janelle Monae opening. In one show she forgot lyrics and left the stage twice, yet the crowd cheered her on. In Dubai the following month she was booed and cut her set short. Back in 2008 she had even started learning the drums for it. Only two songs intended for a new album had been completed when she died.[1] [2] [3]

On the twenty third of March 2011 she recorded a duet of the standard Body and Soul with Tony Bennett, one of the singers her father had played at home when she was little. Bennett praised her natural jazz voice but said afterwards he was worried about her and praying for her. Footage of the session was later shown in the film Amy. It was her last studio recording, and it would not be released until after she was gone. Bennett later reflected, in the film, that life teaches you how to live it, if you live long enough.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her comeback tour of Europe opened in Belgrade on the eighteenth of June 2011. It was a disaster. For about ninety minutes she wandered the stage, slurred and mumbled through songs, sat down, left the stage while her band played on, and struggled to remember the names of her own musicians. The crowd booed. Serbia's defence minister called it a huge shame. She had just finished a course of alcohol rehab and was supposed to be staying dry. Within days the Istanbul and Athens shows were cancelled, and then the whole tour, with her team saying she would get as long as it took.[1] [2] [3] [4]

She did not perform again, except once. On the twentieth of July 2011 she turned up unannounced at the Roundhouse in Camden, where her goddaughter Dionne was singing, got up on stage, danced with her, and urged the audience to buy Dionne's album. Three days later she was dead. Her GP visited on the evening of Friday the twenty second of July. Amy had been sober from the third of July but had started drinking again on the twentieth. She told the doctor she did not know whether she would stop, and specifically said she did not want to die.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her live in bodyguard, Andrew Morris, heard her that night laughing, listening to music and watching old videos of her own performances. He last spoke to her at two in the morning. At ten he looked in and assumed she was asleep. Some time after three in the afternoon on Saturday the twenty third of July 2011 he checked again, found her in the same position, not breathing and without a pulse, and called for help. Amy Winehouse was pronounced dead at her home in Camden Square. She was twenty seven years old.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Inquests, farewells and a posthumous album

For weeks there was speculation about drugs. It was wrong. In August her family announced that toxicology tests had found no illegal substances in her body. The inquest in October 2011 heard that her blood contained 416 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres, more than five times the drink drive limit, a level associated with death. Police had found vodka bottles in her room. The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure. Then it emerged that the coroner, Suzanne Greenaway, lacked the required legal experience, and a second inquest was held in January 2013. It reached exactly the same conclusion, death by alcohol poisoning.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Her funeral was held on the twenty sixth of July 2011 at Edgwarebury Lane Cemetery in north London, a private Jewish service led by Rabbi Frank Hellner, with several hundred mourners. Mark Ronson, Kelly Osbourne, Dionne Bromfield and Reg Traviss were among them. Her father gave the eulogy and ended by wishing his angel goodnight. The service closed with Carole King's So Far Away, one of her favourite songs, with mourners singing along. She was cremated at Golders Green, and in September 2012 her ashes were buried beside those of her grandmother Cynthia.[1] [2] [3]

Fans flooded back to her music. Back to Black returned to number one in the UK, and after her death she set a Guinness World Record for the most songs by a woman on the UK singles chart at the same time, with eight. On what would have been her twenty eighth birthday, the fourteenth of September 2011, her duet with Tony Bennett was released. It made Bennett, at eighty five, the oldest living artist on the Billboard Hot 100, and in February 2012 it won her a sixth Grammy. Her family launched the Amy Winehouse Foundation that same day, to help vulnerable young people.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In December 2011 came Lioness: Hidden Treasures, a collection of demos, covers and unfinished songs chosen by Mark Ronson, Salaam Remi and her family. Remi promised it would not become an endless stream of posthumous releases. It included her early version of Our Day Will Come, recorded for Frank, and Like Smoke, featuring Nas. The cover photograph had been taken by the rock singer Bryan Adams in 2007. It entered the UK chart at number one, with the biggest first week sales of her career. Profits went to the foundation. A collection of her BBC performances followed in 2012.[1] [2] [3]

Films, fights and a lasting voice

In 2015 Asif Kapadia, who had made the Formula One documentary Senna, released Amy, built from archive footage and around a hundred interviews. It won the Oscar for best documentary and a Grammy. Her father hated it. Mitch said the film painted him as a villain and was full of untruths, threatened legal action, and later said he and Reg Traviss would make their own film to set the record straight. The filmmakers stood by their work. The documentary became the highest grossing British documentary ever released in the UK.[1] [2] [3]

In 2014 a bronze statue of Amy by the sculptor Scott Eaton was unveiled in Camden's Stables Market, on what would have been her thirty first birthday. Locals had taken to calling her the Queen of Camden. In 2018 her father announced plans for a hologram tour, with proceeds going to the foundation. Then in 2024 came the biopic Back to Black, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and made with the estate's backing. Marisa Abela played Amy and did her own singing, with Jack O'Connell as Blake and Eddie Marsan as Mitch. Reviews were mixed, but the film opened at number one in Britain.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Her influence on the music that followed is hard to overstate. Adele said Amy paved the way for artists like her and made people excited about British music again. After Back to Black, record labels went looking for bold female voices, and Duffy, Florence Welch, Adele and many others followed. Singers from Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars to Billie Eilish and Raye have named her as an influence. A Spin editor called her the Nirvana moment for all these women. Bob Dylan, in 2017, called her the last real individualist around.[1] [2] [3]

Back to Black has sold around twenty million copies worldwide and is one of Britain's best selling albums of the century. In 2023 Rolling Stone placed Amy among the two hundred greatest singers of all time. In 2025 the Library of Congress added Back to Black to the National Recording Registry, alongside records by Elton John and Tracy Chapman. The foundation set up in her name works with young people in Britain and has an office in New York. She made just two studio albums, and for many listeners they are enough.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The people around Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil. The great love and great damage of her life. They met in Camden, split when he returned to an ex, and that heartbreak became Back to Black. They married in Miami Beach in May 2007. He was jailed for assaulting a pub landlord and trying to pervert justice, and by many accounts drugs dominated the marriage. They divorced in 2009, yet she kept saying she still loved him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Amy Winehouse and Mitch Winehouse. Her father, a London cabbie who sang Sinatra around the house, was her first musical influence, and she wore a Daddy's Girl tattoo for him. He later ran her finances, spoke constantly to the press about her problems, and wrote a memoir. After her death he founded the Amy Winehouse Foundation, and he fiercely rejected the way the 2015 film Amy portrayed him.[1] [2] [3]

Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson. The New York producer co-wrote and produced half of Back to Black, including Rehab and the title track, and recorded Valerie with her for his own album. She was brutally honest with him about ideas she did not like, which he said saved him time. They fell out in 2008, but after her death he called her his musical soulmate and later became a patron of her foundation.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Amy Winehouse and Salaam Remi. The Queens born producer made most of Frank with her in Miami and half of Back to Black. He described Miami as her escape from the chaos of London. He was working on her third album when she died, and afterwards compiled Lioness: Hidden Treasures with Mark Ronson. On the day she died he tweeted farewell to his baby sister, calling her by the nickname Cherry.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Amy Winehouse and Reg Traviss. The film director was her boyfriend from early 2010 until her death, and by her father's account they planned to marry and have children. He attended her funeral. He later joined Mitch in condemning the documentary Amy, saying he had given six hours of interviews that were left out, and the two announced plans for an alternative film.[1] [2] [3]

Amy Winehouse and Tony Bennett. One of the voices of her childhood, played by her father at home. In March 2011 they recorded Body and Soul together, her final studio recording. He admired her jazz instincts but worried openly about her health. The duet won a Grammy after her death, and in the film Amy he reflected that life teaches you how to live it, if you live long enough.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Amy Winehouse and Dionne Bromfield. Her goddaughter, whom Amy signed as the first act on her own label, Lioness Records, in 2009, when Dionne was thirteen. Amy sang backing vocals for her on Strictly Come Dancing. Amy's very last public appearance was jumping on stage to dance with Dionne at the Roundhouse in Camden, three days before she died. Dionne was at the funeral.[1] [2] [3]

Amy Winehouse and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Mark Ronson hired Sharon Jones's Brooklyn band to play on Back to Black, and they toured America with Amy in 2007. Jones was upset at first, joking that she was old enough to be Amy's mother and should not take a back seat to her. She came round, and after meeting Amy in 2008 she asked people to pray for her rather than laugh at her.[1] [2]

Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty. The Babyshambles singer was a fellow Camden addict and a constant tabloid partner in 2008, when they posted bizarre videos of themselves playing with baby mice. Amy told Rolling Stone they were just good friends and that he had refused her idea of a concept EP. After her death Doherty said they had been lovers at one point, and he later gave a single's proceeds to her foundation.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Amy Winehouse and Nas. The rapper, who shares her birthday, was a close friend introduced through Salaam Remi. She wrote Me and Mr Jones about him, named after his surname. After her death he released two duets with her, Like Smoke on Lioness and Cherry Wine on his 2012 album Life Is Good. Cherry was the name of her guitar.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Amy Winehouse and Alex Winehouse. Her older brother shaped her taste, playing jazz through his bedroom wall and introducing her to Ray Charles. He stayed out of the spotlight during her fame, trying to be a refuge of normal life. He later gave up journalism to work for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, and said honestly that she was loyal and generous, but could also be impossible.[1] [2] [3]

Amy Winehouse and Ronnie Spector. Amy's beehive and winged eyeliner were borrowed from the Ronettes, and Ronnie Spector once looked at a newspaper photo of Amy and thought it was herself. Spector began covering Back to Black in 2008, and after Amy died she released it as a tribute single to benefit addiction treatment. She took part in the 2018 documentary about the album.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Amy Winehouse

• As a schoolgirl she would sing Fly Me to the Moon on her way to see the headmistress. Amy grew up with Sinatra records at home. Whenever she was sent to the head teacher for being told off, she sang the standard Fly Me to the Moon on the way in.[1]
• Her first group was a rap duo called Sweet 'n' Sour, and Amy was Sour. Inspired by Salt-N-Pepa, she formed the duo with her childhood best friend Juliette Ashby. Amy told The Observer that she was Sour, of course.[1] [2] [3]
• Her grandmother Cynthia once dated the jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott. Cynthia Winehouse had been a singer and dated Ronnie Scott, founder of the Soho club. Amy later had a pin-up tattoo with Cynthia's name, and her ashes lie beside her grandmother's.[1] [2] [3]
• Before fame, Amy worked as an entertainment journalist. As a teenager she wrote showbiz news for the World Entertainment News Network in London, while singing with a local band on the side.[1] [2] [3]
• Her first management deal paid her 250 pounds a week. Simon Fuller's 19 Management signed her in 2002 and paid her 250 pounds a week, set against her future earnings, while she developed as a writer.[1] [2]
• Island's scout had to hunt for months just to learn her name. Darcus Beese heard her voice on another act's recordings but was told he could not know who she was. It took months of asking around to find Amy Winehouse.[1] [2]
• The title Frank is partly a tribute to Frank Sinatra. Salaam Remi revealed in the Lioness liner notes that the title referred both to her blunt lyrics and to Sinatra, an early hero. A co-writer recalled her wearing jeans stitched with I Love Sinatra.[1] [2]
• She claimed she had never listened to her debut album all the way through. In 2004 she told The Observer she did not own a copy of Frank and was only eighty percent behind it, because the label overruled her choice of songs and mixes.[1] [2]
• Her lowest charting single, Stronger Than Me, still won an Ivor Novello Award. The song peaked at number seventy one in the UK in 2003, the worst chart placing of her career, yet won the songwriting award for best contemporary song in 2004.[1] [2]
• She expected Mark Ronson to be an older man with a beard. Before they met in New York in 2006, Amy assumed Ronson was a sound engineer and pictured someone much older. He was thirty.[1] [2]
• The Dap-Kings recorded their Back to Black parts without Amy in the room. She had already flown home to London when the Brooklyn band cut the backing tracks from Ronson's demos. She met them properly only months later.[1]
• The Dap-Kings hung their Back to Black platinum disc above a toilet. Daptone co-founder Gabe Roth said the bathroom wall was simply the only free space in the studio.[1]
• The hit version of Valerie was a last minute afterthought. The band spent a day on a slow version. At the end of the session Ronson asked for one quick upbeat Motown take, and that became the hit.[1] [2]
• Valerie was written about a real person, a makeup artist named Valerie Star. The Zutons singer Dave McCabe wrote it in a cab about an American friend in trouble for driving offences. In 2019 she was revealed as makeup artist Valerie Star.[1]
• The Rehab video was shot in a grand Georgian house with the band in dressing gowns. Directed by Phil Griffin, it was filmed at 33 Portland Place in London. One musician was dressed to resemble Donny Hathaway, her favourite artist.[1] [2]
• A song on Back to Black began with a swear word as its title. Me and Mr Jones was originally named after a rude phrase in its chorus. Island's Darcus Beese told Amy and Remi they could not release it with that title.[1]
• Some Unholy War was sparked by a radio report on the war in Afghanistan. According to her first manager Nick Shymansky, hearing the phrase holy war on the news gave her the idea of turning it into a song of loyalty to her man.[1]
• A writer on He Can Only Hold Her sued after being left off the credits. John Harrison, who made the original demo, sued for copyright infringement. A settlement followed and his name was added to the song.[1]
• Actor Bruce Willis asked to introduce her at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards. Her performance of Rehab that night triggered a jump in digital sales that sent it into the US top ten.[1] [2]
• She performed at the 2008 Grammys at three in the morning, London time. Without a US visa, she sang live by satellite from Riverside Studios in London and won five awards, dedicating one to London and Camden Town.[1]
• Prince invited her on stage to sing Love Is a Losing Game. Prince had been performing her song live, and on the twenty first of September 2007 they sang it together at his final aftershow at the O2. George Michael also chose it on Desert Island Discs.[1]
• At the same 2008 NME Awards she was nominated as best solo artist and named worst dressed. Her look was often mocked in Britain, even while Karl Lagerfeld called her the new Bardot and sent beehived models down the Chanel runway.[1] [2] [3]
• She kept an upright tanning bed in her flat and used it daily. Both Wikipedia's account and Rolling Stone's 2008 profile mention the vertical sunbed, which Rolling Stone called her main concession to health.[1] [2]
• She paid 4,000 pounds for a stranger's surgery in St Lucia. A local man, Julian Jean DeBaptiste, said Amy covered his urgent operation in 2009, then hugged him and told him not to tell anyone.[1]
• Nas, the subject of Me and Mr Jones, shares her birthday. Both were born on the fourteenth of September, Nas ten years earlier in 1973. He later released two duets with her after her death.[1] [2] [3]
• His Cherry Wine duet with Amy was named after her guitar. The song on Nas's 2012 album Life Is Good took its title from the nickname Amy gave her guitar, cherry.[1] [2]
• The cover photo of Lioness was taken by rock star Bryan Adams. Adams, also a photographer, shot the image in 2007. The posthumous album debuted at number one in the UK.[1]
• After her death she held a Guinness record for most simultaneous UK chart songs by a woman. In the week after she died, eight of her songs appeared on the UK singles chart at the same time.[1]
• Her father was in New York about to play the Blue Note jazz club when she died. Mitch Winehouse, an amateur singer, flew straight home. He had been booked to perform at the famous club.[1]
• Her funeral ended with mourners singing along to Carole King's So Far Away. It was one of her favourite songs. Carole King said she was grateful Amy had recorded one of her songs.[1] [2] [3]
• Scenes shown in the film Amy as her Belgrade concert were actually from someone else's show. Footage of a 2013 concert by the Serbian singer Jelena Karleusa was wrongly presented as Amy's last show. Karleusa threatened legal action but dropped it out of respect for Amy.[1]
• Her death was the subject of two inquests, because the first coroner turned out to be unqualified. Suzanne Greenaway had been appointed by her husband, the senior coroner, and lacked five years' legal experience, so the inquest had to be held again in 2013.[1] [2]
• She launched a 17 piece fashion collection with Fred Perry in 2010. She attended design meetings and gave input on fit and colour. Collections she designed were released after her death, with part of the revenue going to her foundation.[1]
• The Back to Black cover dress was auctioned for her charity. The dress she wore on the cover of her second album sold for 36,000 pounds, raising money for the Amy Winehouse Foundation.[1]
• A bronze statue of Amy stands in Camden's Stables Market. Sculpted by Scott Eaton, it was unveiled on what would have been her thirty first birthday in 2014, with her parents present.[1] [2]
• Back to Black is preserved in the US Library of Congress. In 2025 it was added to the National Recording Registry, as a recording judged culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.