About Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse [1983–2011], known perhaps as much for her challenging lifestyle as her iconic music, was a British singer/songwriter who achieved considerable financial success and peer-group acclaim over the course of her relatively brief career.
Winehouse was writing her own songs as early as age 13, having grown up in a North London neighborhood where all sorts of music was heard. Her earliest influences were American R&B singers such as Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and many of her first recordings featured the soul-influenced tonality that would become her trademark. Adopting a visual stage presence that was a combination of punk and 1960s girl-group homage, Winehouse signed with Island Records. The label released her first album, Frank, in October 2003. The 13 tracks offered up a mixture of R&B and soul, all with very strong jazz influences. A total of four singles ended up being released from the album.
Her other studio album was Back to Black, which came out on Island Records in October 2006. It reached the Number Two mark in the United States and was at the top of the charts in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland. At the time of her demise, Winehouse had sold close to four million albums in the U.K. alone. Her final recording, done on 23 March 2011, was a duet with American crooner Tony Bennett and titled “Body and Soul.” The song was released on Winehouse’s posthumous album, Lioness: Hidden Treasures.
Following her death from alcohol poisoning, her father established the Amy Winehouse Foundation to aide a number of charitable causes with funds acquired from ongoing royalties. Charities on the receiving end of this largess have included the Little Havens Children’s Hospice in Essex, U.K., and the LauraLynn House hospice in Ireland.
