Amy Winehouse

Since singer Amy Winehouse’s shocking but not surprising death last week, I have been puzzling over why I mourn her so much.

Given only surface considerations, I should not have been so affected by her. We had little in common, other than gender, etymologically close first names, western culture, and, I learned today, Jewish roots. I rarely listen to music recreationally. I am a middle-aged mother and professor. I no longer drink alcohol; have never tried an illegal drug. My talents and my arts overlap only a bit, and none of them will bring me the kind of acclaim that was rightly hers. She was none of those things.

But she caught my attention. About two years ago, I asked my husband about who this Amy Winehouse was, the one who I kept reading about in the newspaper (see how old fashioned and square I am? The actual newspaper!). He explained about her music. I remember vividly that he said that people were wondering “how all that soul got into a tiny little white girl.”

So, off I ran to Youtube to watch her music. Rehab caught me completely. I watched it over and over again, mystified by its appeal but stuck on it nonetheless. Content-wise, there is nothing in it that I can relate to. But musically, I had to keep coming back to it. I even bought Back to Black, which is remarkable given that in any given year I buy only one or two CDs (yes, CDs; forget about downloading music onto some portable machine).

Here is where I have come to this week: I can’t get over Rehab because it is great art. My experience of listening brings to mind the chills I got the first time I heard Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe or how I can hear Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah over and over again without getting tired of it (and, in fact, once again picking through its meaning and arguing in my head with the minister who got it mostly wrong). Or why Mozart’s Dies Irae is my all-time favorite piece of music. Great music, I think today, transcends the meaning of its words and makes the audience pay attention whatever the mismatch of values between musician and auditor.

Thank you, Amy Winehouse, for giving me the opportunity to understand this. I regret the rest of the music you will never create.