Actually, that's not the clip I was looking for. On a holiday special edition of Terry Wogan's chatshow, there were about four celebrities in fancy dress, the audience had to guess who they were. Leslie was dressed as batman, he gave the game away when he started farting.
Amy Winehouse, the British singer who died last weekend, was a paradoxical artist. Did she, could she, really understand what she was doing? Her social behavior, convulsed by myriad addictions, was atrocious—a spectacle of assaults, drug arrests, and public embarrassments as she emerged from one spot of trouble and dove into another almost reflexively. She was boozy and disheveled, a tarted-up gamin somehow reminiscent both of a blowzed '60s pinup and a canny street urchin, all wrapped up with the bow of her almost Dickensian name on top. Yet she radiated precision and formalism in her music. Her gaze on a stage could be vacant, almost affectless. But somehow her albums betray an astringent intelligence, over- and undertones of meaning and calculation, and a surprisingly nuanced grasp of the music she loved from decades long past. And her arresting voice conveyed not just emotion, but on occasion universal cataclysms of love, loss, and degradation.
The obits talked too little about how her art worked. The marriage of her artistic sensibilities was as unusual as her appearance. She purveyed a relatively soft sound, neo-jazz on some tracks, retro soul on others, shot through with the heart-bursting emotionalism of the girl groups of the 1960s, yet all brought down to earth with the petulance, grittiness, and self-indulgence of hip-hop. She didn't rap per se, but the sensibility of this rough milieu, reinterpreted through her unfailingly feminine sensibility, informs all of her music.
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Lindsey Lohan not talented? That's unfair --- didn't you see Freaky Friday?
I actualy have one of Winehouse's CDs and so she's pretty well known to me. I like her, but she was no genuius, and she was a living train wreck. I'm certainly not pleased she is dead, but did anyone expect her to live to a ripe old age?
Not only was she a very talented musician she had a great personality
I love her speaking voice - I'd never heard her talk before. This video is sadly prophetic.
I liked the arrangements of her songs moreso than her voice - a friend of mine was always on about 'She's got the most fantastic voice...' before I'd ever heard her and when I did, I loved her, but not because I loved her actual physical voice - it was the tiniest bit reedy to my ear- but still I did end up loving her because I just loved her style and chutzpa - I loved the brass arrangements in her songs and I thought 'What a sense of humor' and when I watched her videos I used to think,'God - she should be an actress.'
Really enjoyed her - yeah - but I think she's gotten what she was after - oblivion, peace...finally. I'm sorry for her mom and dad, but feel she's probably where she was trying to get.
My favorite video of her - I used to watch this over and over and just laugh at her expressions. I thought she'd make as good an actress as she had a singer:
0 Replies
Finn dAbuzz
1
Reply
Tue 26 Jul, 2011 11:25 pm
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
Quote:
Her music was entirely derivitive.
all art is derivitive.
Not to the extent her's was, and the more unique and new, the greater the genius,
Not to the extent her's was, and the more unique and new, the greater the genius,
Winehouse reached back decades and brought forwards styles that had long been deemed unsellable, put them together in a new way and sold it. Now we have Adelaide following in her footsteps with her smash hit "rolling in the deep" which is getting played across multiple platforms.... ADELAIDE!..this fat chick from the UK that no label in their right mind would sign as a headline act if it were not for Winehouse.
It is all due to Winehouse putting together some old stuff in a new way that appeals to the masses, when what she did was not on anyone elses radar to even try . Luck? Maybe, but as I said she put together two great albums that sold well.... that she was extremely talented is more likely.
Ahh so sad. It has been such a surreal weekend news-wise.
I went to see the flowers and was going to leave a can of K cider but there were no corner shops so I just drew a heart in lipstick on the Camden Square sign instead.
0 Replies
Finn dAbuzz
0
Reply
Wed 27 Jul, 2011 11:05 pm
@hawkeye10,
Well there you go...a collection of Grammys signifies genius.
By that measure, I suppose you consider the following to also posses musical genius:
Paula Abdul
Alvin and The Chipmunks
Clint Black
Michael Bolton
Debby Boone
Michael Buble
Captain & Tennile
Cher
The list goes on and on and on...and I didn't make it through the "C's"
William Bennett has a thing or two to say about Winehouse's Grammys
Quote:
We, of course, do not know what will become of Winehouse's artistic legacy: Her singing talent was compared to Billie Holiday's, and there was a lot of talent in her. But her industry should take a lesson from her short life and early death and create a legacy of it -- or at least learn something from it.
A good place to start learning the lesson is the Grammy Awards nominating committee. Did they have any problem or pause whatsoever in emptying their cabinet of awards for such a song or such a character?
Did one judge say: "Wait, I think we might be sending the wrong message here"? Or, rather, did they do everything they could to get her to the Grammy Awards even after she was barred from entering the United States? The answer is the latter -- and she appeared for her awards by video feed from Great Britain.
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.Perhaps the entertainment, education and sports industries can take this, our latest human tragedy, as a wakeup call and start a national campaign once again. Such a campaign would begin with taking responsibility for what goes on within our schools and professional industries. It should continue onward, with the industries internally policing their achievers who are in trouble and getting them to rehab, not ignoring their lifestyle or saying it's none of their business or rewarding them in blatant disregard of their problems. The truth is, drugs kill -- and that message needs to be communicated over and over again, once again.
Obviously I could not disagree more, art should always be recognized for the quality of the art, not for our judgments of the artist. In much the same way an idea must be evaluated by the strength of the argument for it, not by our opinion of the speaker.
On another note it is clear that Bennett will go to his grave convinced that the war on drugs was the right thing to do in spite of the fact that is has failed to achieve its stated goals and has been waged at tremendous cost to america and Americans....
0 Replies
izzythepush
6
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Thu 28 Jul, 2011 04:13 am
@Finn dAbuzz,
A young girl with great talent has died tragically. If all you can do is sneer, you're an even smaller minded, sadder little nonentity than I thought you were. Why don't you show some respect for the dead you pathetic little man?
The pre-requisite human quality is one needs to have a heart. Even if there is no respect for the dead, a respect and a grasp for the condition called human frailty and/or failings must be acknowleged. When you stand in judgement of others and are aboveit all, there can be no such 'generosity ' of emotion.
