Back To Black Turns 20

Island2006When Amy Winehouse won Record Of The Year for "Rehab" at the 2008 Grammys, she was visibly stunned. Footage still circulates, her face frozen in pure shock. She had won five awards that night. Her friend Juliette Ashby turned to her and told her she was proud of her. "Jules," Winehouse replied, "this is so boring without drugs."The singer’s short life was littered with tragedy, but that disillusioned moment encapsulates the darkness she inhabited. She had just achieved international success with her second album, Back To Black, which came out 20 years ago today in her native UK. (It would arrive in the US about five months later.) Recognition couldn’t save Winehouse — in fact, it could only accelerate her plunge as she endured scrutiny and mockery. She was only 23, yet sang soulfully with the skill, cleverness, and pain of someone who’s lived a thousand lives. She always came off as bigger than herself, an instantly distinguishable cultural icon with her trademark black beehive, huge eyeliner wing, and Monroe piercing.Frank, Winehouse’s debut LP, was released in 2003, establishing her as an unapologetic, rebellious star in the making. For Back To Black, Winehouse secured Mark Ronson, the hip-hop DJ and rising producer known for bringing a modern touch to retro soul. Also in the mix were the Dap-Kings, the backing band for funk and soul revivalist Sharon Jones, and Frank collaborator Salaam Remi.The record was cleaner, more focused, and had the hits. Traces of the youthful playfulness from Frank lingered, but her voice was staggeringly more developed and mature, her lyrical subjects more harrowing. Winehouse communicates her gnawing troubles with commanding coolness, her contralto unfurling effortlessly over the band's jazzy exuberance. Nothing about “Rehab,” a song about refusing help, indicates defeat or sadness. The timeless tune — a certified dive bar classic — feels like a victorious march into the abyss. “I can express myself,” Amy Winehouse told UK magazine The List in 2007. “I’m not an idiot. I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable. I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally — and then I write a song about it and I feel better.”It was easy for many critics to dismiss Winehouse — a messy public figure showing up to performances drunk, getting booed off the stage, and throwing punches at fans who groped her — as an idiot. But her self-destruction was self-aware, chronicled in her music like she was watching herself wreak havoc from afar. When she warns that she’s trouble on "You Know I’m No Good," she’s also warning herself. She sings with complete control about having no control. She’s accepted her ill fate and is doing the only thing she can — turning it all into emotional songs that make time stop. Back To Black is both an exploration of the darkness and an escape from it.“Wake Up Alone” is a slow number that flirts with doo-wop and feels like pacing through an empty house on a hungover day. Winehouse's voice soars dejectedly, following introspective threads about excruciating heartache caused by a man who’s always keeping her waiting. She sings of trying to keep herself distracted and being flooded with dread. On “Unholy War,” she expresses love in terms of death, like a relationship is a suicide pact. She casually fantasizes about her man reading her will. The influence of girl groups shines through in the soft vocalizing of background singers, providing a melancholy, old-timey backdrop.One of the most chipper tracks is about crying. On “Tears Dry On Their Own,” Winehouse sounds more clear-eyed than ever, questioning her behavior from an objective perspective, unable to reconcile her feelings with reality: "I don’t know why I got so attached/ It’s my responsibility/ And you don’t owe nothing to me/ But to walk away, I have no capacity." She sings confidently, sounding like the most independent woman in the world, lamenting her inclination for codependency. After two decades, there’s never been another Amy Winehouse. The only modern figure who compares is Lana Del Rey, who indulges more in alternative pop than soul, funk, and jazz like Winehouse. Elizabeth Grant had a similar arc of singing in clubs before making it big; but when she did make it big, she crafted a Winehouse-like persona instead of being herself. Her mythos is intriguing, but Winehouse was the real thing. Fiona Apple, whose own rise to fame preceded Winehouse's, could be considered a peer, as she was always unabashedly herself and struggling to handle the spotlight. But these days Apple is constantly disappearing, incapable of existing in the public eye or at least unwilling to bear it. This much hasn't changed: The music business is not an environment that nurtures women like Amy Winehouse. Even if you grapple with your self-destruction in your art, you will be criticized and harassed for exhibiting that same behavior in your life, especially as a woman. You’re expected to be a role model for young girls and the art comes second.Though Winehouse’s worst moments often overshadow her accomplishments, the best of her lives on in Back To Black. Her wisdom, her talent, her perspicacity, her tenderness. On the title track, you can hear her own disappointment with herself and her actions, as if she could see her own destiny laid out before her and couldn’t do anything to change it.After she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at age 27, the mocking persisted, even though she wasn’t alive to defend herself. How I Met Your Mother actor Neil Patrick Harris hosted a Halloween party with a meat and cheese buffet platter called The Corpse of Amy Winehouse, a disturbing recreation of her dead body. There’s not a more apt example of the disrespect and hatred Winehouse dealt with just for making art as a troubled woman. But Back To Black stands forever as a triumph, a brilliant artist bravely choosing ultimate vulnerability in a world full of cowards.