Amy Winehouse

Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was a British singer, songwriter, musician, and businesswoman. She is known for her distinctive contralto vocals, expressive and autobiographical songwriting, and eclectic blend of genres such as soul, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Her music, along with her fashion and highly publicised personal life, made her an influential figure in popular culture.

Born to a Jewish family in Enfield, London, Winehouse grew up in a jazz-influenced household. She was a member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in her youth, recording several songs before signing a publishing deal with EMI. After a friend passed her demo to a music executive, Winehouse signed with Island Records in 2002. She worked with producer Salaam Remi for debut studio album, Frank (2003), which was commercially successful in the UK and drew critical acclaim for its mature songwriting and jazz-imbued production. Its lead single, "Stronger Than Me", earned the singer an Ivor Novello Award.

Inspired by 1960s girl groups and soul music, Winehouse recorded her second studio album, Back to Black (2006), with Remi, the Dap-Kings and producer Mark Ronson. It became an international critical and commercial success and one of the best-selling albums of all time. Its lead single, "Rehab", was a worldwide top-ten song and won her a second Ivor Novello Award. At the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in 2008, Winehouse won five awards, tying the then-record for the most Grammys won by a female artist in a single night and becoming the first British woman to win five Grammys. Her wins included three of the "Big Four" categories—Best New Artist, and Record of the Year and Song of the Year for "Rehab"—along with Best Pop Vocal Album.

Winehouse's career was often overshadowed by substance abuse, mental illness, and addiction, culminating in her death from alcohol poisoning at her Camden Square home in London at the age of 27. Her brother believed that bulimia was also a factor. Winehouse's life and career were depicted in the documentary Amy (2015) and dramatised in the biopic Back to Black (2024). In 2023, Rolling Stone included Winehouse on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2025, Back to Black was preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

Early life

Amy Jade Winehouse was born at Chase Farm Hospital in Gordon Hill in Enfield, London, on 14 September 1983. She was born to Jewish parents: her father, Mitchell "Mitch" Winehouse, was an amateur singer and taxi driver; her mother, Janis "Jane" Winehouse (née Seaton), was a pharmacist. She had a brother named Alex, who was three years older than her. Winehouse was raised in Southgate, London; when she was five she began attending Osidge Primary School. She then started her secondary education at Ashmole School, where her grades were "surprisingly good" according to her mother. As a child, Winehouse attended a weekly cheder, a Jewish primary school. In a later interview, she expressed her dislike for the school, recalling that she often begged her father to let her stay home and felt she "learned nothing about being Jewish" from attending.

Many of Winehouse's maternal uncles were professional jazz musicians. Her paternal grandmother, Cynthia, had been a singer and dated jazz saxophonist Ronnie Scott. Cynthia, along with Winehouse's parents, nurtured Winehouse's early interest in jazz. Mitch would frequently sing and play the songs of jazz musicians like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett around the house, and when reprimanded at school, Winehouse would sing "Fly Me to the Moon" before seeing the headmistress. Her parents separated when she was nine, after which she lived with her mother and her boyfriend in Whetstone, London, and spent weekends with her father and his girlfriend in Hatfield Heath, Essex.

In 1992, Cynthia encouraged Winehouse to attend the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, where she spent Saturdays developing her singing, acting and tap dancing. With her childhood friend Juliette Ashby, she formed a short-lived rap duo called Sweet 'n' Sour. Winehouse later enroled at the Sylvia Young Theatre School; at her audition she sang "On the Sunny Side of the Street". Reports that she was expelled at 14 for "not applying herself" and for piercing her nose were denied by both Sylvia Young and her father, who clarified that she simply transferred schools at 15. One of her teachers there recalled her as a skilled writer, saying she could have become a novelist or journalist. She later attended the Mount School in Mill Hill and brifely went to the BRIT School in Selhurst, Croydon. After experimenting with her brother's guitar, Winehouse purchased her own and soon began writing her own songs. Around the same time, she worked as an entertainment journalist for the World Entertainment News Network and was a vocalist for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. Her best friend, soul singer Tyler James, later sent a demo tape of hers to an A&R scout to help kickstart her professional career.

Career

2002–2005: Career beginnings and Frank

Winehouse was signed to Simon Fuller's 19 Management in 2002 and was initially paid £250 a week against future earnings. While being developed by the management company, Winehouse was kept as a recording industry secret, although she was a regular jazz standards singer at the Cobden Club. Her future A&R representative at Island, Darcus Beese, heard of her by chance when the manager of the Lewinson Brothers showed him some productions of his clients, which featured Winehouse as key vocalist. When he asked who the singer was, the manager told him he was not allowed to say. Having decided that he wanted to sign her, it took several months of asking around for Beese to eventually discover who the singer was. By that time, Winehouse had already recorded a number of songs, signed a publishing deal with EMI, and formed a working relationship with producer Salaam Remi.

Beese introduced Winehouse to his boss, Island head Nick Gatfield, who shared his enthusiasm in signing the young artist. Winehouse was signed to Island while rival interest in her had started to build with representatives of EMI and Virgin Records starting to make moves. Beese told HitQuarters that he felt the excitement over an artist who was an atypical pop star for the time was due to a backlash against reality TV music shows, whose audiences starved for fresh, genuine young talent.

Winehouse's debut album, Frank, was released on 20 October 2003. Produced mainly by Salaam Remi, many of the songs were influenced by jazz and, apart from two covers, Winehouse co-wrote every song. The album received wide critical acclaim with compliments given to the "cool, critical gaze" in its lyrics. Winehouse's voice was compared with those of Sarah Vaughan and Macy Gray, among others.

The album entered the upper reaches of the UK Albums Chart in 2004 when it was nominated for the Brit Awards in the categories of British Female Solo Artist and British Urban Act. It went on to achieve platinum sales. Later in 2004, she and Remi won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song, for their first single together, "Stronger Than Me". The album was also shortlisted for the 2004 Mercury Music Prize. In the same year, she performed at the Glastonbury Festival (on the Jazz World stage), the V Festival and the Montreal International Jazz Festival. After the release of the album, Winehouse commented that she was "only 80 percent behind [the] album" because Island Records had overruled her preferences for the songs and mixes to be included.

2006–2008: Back to Black and international success

After the release of her first jazz-influenced album, Winehouse's focus shifted to the girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s. Winehouse hired New York singer Sharon Jones's longtime band, the Dap-Kings, to back her up in the studio and on tour. Mitch Winehouse relates in Amy, My Daughter how fascinating watching her process was: her perfectionism in the studio and how she would put what she had sung on a CD and play it in his taxi outside to know how most people would hear her music. In May 2006, Winehouse's demo tracks such as "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab" appeared on Mark Ronson's New York City radio show on East Village Radio. These were some of the first new songs played on the radio after the release of "Pumps" and both were slated to appear on her second album. The 11-track album, completed in five months, was produced entirely by Salaam Remi and Ronson, with the production credits being split between them. Ronson said in a 2010 interview that he liked working with Winehouse because she was blunt when she did not like his work. She in turn thought that when they first met, he was a sound engineer and that she was expecting an older man with a beard.