[Zippy]

she actually looks happy in her last appearance on stage

bless

[InOne]

Wow epic read lol

I just think nobody deserves to die the way she did and it's very tragic. Maybe it's true some people can't be helped. I don't think I could be totally cold with drug addicts, I've watched loads of docs and I live around quite a few addicts, seeing people slumped out on the street isn't nice.

At least she will get a decent send off

[Vicky.]

can people please remember that while others are bound to have differing views...its not acceptable to insult them over them

Debate, fair enough, but out and out insults arent ok.


Sick of cleaning this thread

[Shaun]

She's currently on top of the US iTunes album chart, and both of her albums are in the top 10 here and in the US. I don't know about other countries.

[Lewis.]

Originally Posted by Shaun

She's currently on top of the US iTunes album chart, and both of her albums are in the top 10 here and in the US. I don't know about other countries.

Really Good for her I suppose. She may have lived a turbulent life and made the wrong decisions but there's no doubting the fact that she's an awesome musician.

[Marc]

Back to Black is No.1 in the UK iTunes chart

[Ninastar]

yay

[Marc]

This thread needs a serious clean up. Not of people's opinions but of strong and offensive things

[Marc]

and Back to Black the single is No.16

[Marc]

Rehab 36, Tears Dry on Their Own 42, You Know I'm No Good 56, Valerie 65

[Livia]

So sad to read about her this morning. And sad to read some of the posts on here last night. I hope those who showed no compassion but felt compelled to give us their two cents, never have someone they love become an addict. Then they can continue sharing their opinions with all the comfort of certainty that ignorance allows them.

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by Omah

I do - I had to contest the description of Winehouse as a "legend" .....



Not from me .....

In the music industry she was seen as a legend though. She is the reason a lot of female artists are where they are today as her sense of music, vocals and fashion inspired and altered quite a bit in the music world and helped several other artists break into the business.

[Marc]

I have never taken drugs or have I ever had anybody close to me become addicted to drugs. However my aunt did die of alcoholism I guess an addiction is an addiction and they are similar.

But I guess being so far into an addiction is must be so hard to get out of it, especially if you're that famous and have all that money to hand. I feel for her family, as it can't have been easy to see a loved one like that just disintegrate in front of them.

All that aside, her music was sensational and she will always be remembered (if not primarily) for her musical talents. R.I.P Amy

[Jack_]

Russell Brand has written a little blog about Amy:

For Amy

July 24th, 2011

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a ****ing genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/07/for-amy/

[Jords]

Back to Black #1 on iTunes albums

[Pyramid*]

Originally Posted by Jords

Back to Black #1 on iTunes albums

Is this 'new' or has it been at the position for many months?

[Callum]

Originally Posted by Pyramid*

Is this 'new' or has it been at the position for many months?

Only been #1 since this morning

[Zippy]

A lot of people will be hearing her music now on all the various media reports of her death. Plus music channels are playing endless tributes to her. As they should.

So obviously its gonna spark new interest in her music. Especially since people realise thats all the music we will ever get from her now. *sob*

[Pyramid*]

Originally Posted by Zippy

A lot of people will be hearing her music now on all the various media reports of her death. Plus music channels are playing endless tributes to her. As they should.

So obviously its gonna spark new interest in her music.......

A fair point and a good one.

[tmi]

I would like to ask a few questions,


If you are addicted to food, does that mean it is a disease?

f you are addicted to booze , does that mean it is a disease?

If Your addicted to drugs , does that mean it is a disease.


If someone has cancer is that a disease?


Tbh I cannot comprehend that addictions are diseases.

People are not addicts from birth, unless they're mother was using while carrying.


People choose to be an addict you cant choose whether you have cancer (the disease) otherwise people would choose not to have it.

People do have a choice whether to be addict.


People turn to all sorts of crutches when life throws them a rough deal at them ie food , boose, drugs. Someone once said you dont know if your alcoholic until you have your first sip. I read somewhere a woman had a gastric band and lost 14stone, she then became addicted to booze, she indeed needed a crutch, perhaps you should treat the reason people have addiction . Most addicts have a reason for taking drugs.

[tmi]

When someone posted the management make money from re - releasing stuff aint that the truth. Amy wont see the rewards.

[Boothy]

Originally Posted by tmi

I would like to ask a few questions,


If you are addicted to food, does that mean it is a disease?

f you are addicted to booze , does that mean it is a disease?

If Your addicted to drugs , does that mean it is a disease.


If someone has cancer is that a disease?


Tbh I cannot comprehend that addictions are diseases.

People are not addicts from birth, unless they're mother was using while carrying.


People choose to be an addict you cant choose whether you have cancer (the disease) otherwise people would choose not to have it.

People do have a choice whether to be addict.


People turn to all sorts of crutches when life throws them a rough deal at them ie food , boose, drugs. Someone once said you dont know if your alcoholic until you have your first sip. I read somewhere a woman had a gastric band and lost 14stone, she then became addicted to booze, she indeed needed a crutch, perhaps you should treat the reason people have addiction . Most addicts have a reason for taking drugs.

But people don't chose to be addicts. That's the point. You think Amy wanted to be lying facedown in her own vomit wondering where her next hit of heroin was gonna come from?

It's not a physical disease like cancer but it's definitely a mental one. She didn't wake up one day and decide 'Oh, I'm gonna become a crack addict today'. But through her own personal life experiences, the people she associated with and naivety, her drug use gradually got more and more out of control.

I'm not trying to say she should be seen as a role model, far from it, but I don't think it's fair to say that her death was totally self inflicted. She was in and out of rehab so it's obvious she knew she was messed up. But addiction alters the mind. Unless you've been there, I don't think anyone, myself included, knows just how powerful it can be.

And not being born an addict has no bearing on anything. People aren't born with cancer.

[tmi]

Originally Posted by Boothy

But people don't chose to be addicts. That's the point. You think Amy wanted to be lying facedown in her own vomit wondering where her next hit of heroin was gonna come from?

It's not a physical disease like cancer but it's definitely a mental one. She didn't wake up one day and decide 'Oh, I'm gonna become a crack addict today'. But through her own personal life experiences, the people she associated with and naivety, her drug use gradually got more and more out of control.

I'm not trying to say she should be seen as a role model, far from it, but I don't think it's fair to say that her death was totally self inflicted. She was in and out of rehab so it's obvious she knew she was messed up. But addiction alters the mind. Unless you've been there, I don't think anyone, myself included, knows just how powerful it can be.

And not being born an addict has no bearing on anything. People aren't born with cancer.

Well according to recent research some are born with the cancer gene.
Yes all your points are valid, but for me she did choose to take drugs, but I guess the people she surrounded herself with also had addictions and that group would have been hard for her to get away from. I think that Pete bloke is heading the same way, a vunerable person hanging around with addicts is a slippery slope, I have seen with my own eyes, they try and get away but they drag them back.

[Vicky.]

Originally Posted by Zippy

So obviously its gonna spark new interest in her music. Especially since people realise thats all the music we will ever get from her now. *sob*

I doubt that very much.

When musicians die, all of a sudden they have loads of unreleased stuff dying to come out and make the management more money. Look at tupac. Still releasing songs.

[Pyramid*]

Originally Posted by Vicky.

I doubt that very much.

When musicians die, all of a sudden they have loads of unreleased stuff dying to come out and make the management more money. Look at tupac. Still releasing songs.

Incredibly good point Vicky.