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I went to the British Daily Mail for all things pop, to try and find more on the very sad death of singer Amy Winehouse. Drudge had put this headline SINGER WINEHOUSE FOUND DEAD in bold, dark letters at the top of his site a couple of days ago.
I don't know why I felt so sad. Probably there have been just too many sad (tragic) news, and deaths, these days. Also, Winehouse, despite her horrible decent into drug addiction and alcoholism, was a very good singer. She sang mostly bluesy songs in her idiosyncratic, easily recognizable voice. She sounded a little like Billie Holiday, but a little harder, harsher.
At the Daily Mail, I found an article by Melanie Phillips: A life lost, a talent squandered, and a celebrity culture that worships self-destruction. There is no mention of Amy Winehouse in the title, but I knew right away it was about her.
Below are some quotes from Phillips' article. But the whole article, which expands into other self-destructive young contemporary artists, is well worth reading:
The terrible contrast between the singer's glorious voice and the debased conclusion to her once glittering career, as she stumbled around a Serbian stage last month too drunk to remember her own lyrics and being booed and jeered by the crowd, was stark indeed...Here are a couple of songs which seem to show that she knew the directions she was headed:
The singer went through a process of 'cold turkey' to get her off drugs - but she turned instead to alcohol and the whole sorry process of disintegration inexorably continued...
[T]he fame of Amy Winehouse did not rest solely upon the quality of her voice. Her public appeal also lay in the very lifestyle that has now killed her.
The soap opera of her deeply dysfunctional life boosted her appeal and commercial value. Indeed, this is openly acknowledged.
At the weekend, commentator India Knight wrote (after telling us all how devastated she was by the singer's death): 'And I loved that she was a bad girl with bad appetites: a breed that, with her passing, heads further into extinction.'...
Much of the marketing of such stars cynically milks the appeal of the 'wild child'...
[Drug]-taking has been tacitly encouraged by the Great And Not-So-Good, those well-heeled but grossly irresponsible committee clones who have decided that illegal drugs are not as damaging to society as the laws that keep them illegal - and who have accordingly helped present drug-takers as romantic rebels against the system...
With the sad and sordid death of Amy Winehouse, the fantasy now lies shattered...
How many ordinary lives have been shattered, after all, because of the addictive example set by such celebrities and the massive influence they wield?...
With Britain awash in drugs and alcohol and with the resulting breakdown in order, the sad fate of Amy Winehouse should indeed make us weep - both for her, and for what it tells us about modern Britain.
- You know I'm no good
- Back to black - an uncanny prediction of her own fate?