Amy Winhouse – молодая, состаявшаяся на британской сцене джаз (в принципе, называет себя джазисткой, но больше поет cоул) певица с голосом и манерой исполнения аля – 40-е. Начала свою карьеру с очень мелодичного джаза, немного провокационных текстов и Мега красивой, живой инструментальной музыки. Сейчас, пожалуй, самая эпатажная фигура английского Шобиза. Вид, полнейшая провокация, тексты- цензура отдыхает, поведение – уффф (дееевачкам себя так вести – не прилично!). Жуткая алкоголичка и наркоманка. Со слов друзей, проживающих в Лондоне: тусовщица еще та, вечно её встречают по различностным вечеринам и кабакам, трезвая в публичных местах не появляется.

SHE has been hailed as the new Ella Fitzgerald and has a voice that has been described in turns as ”spiritual, flirty, velvety, worldly wise and late night”. She is generally regarded by all as the Next Big Thing. Her name is Amy Winehouse and she’s only 19 years old.
Born and raised in Camden, north London, Amy Winehouse has a voice that is capable of melting concrete. She might sound like a 1940s jazz singer but she tempers that sweet soul sound with gritty urban music pinched from R&B and hip-hop beats. She writes about what she knows and has seen in her short life and she’s taken her love of jazz and soul and made the sound her own.
Her debut album Frank (as in Sinatra) is already marked as a future classic and she has been singled out by the Mobos (Music of Black Origin Awards) as a name to remember. Her album has grown naturally out of her innate skills, curiosity and teenage passions, which is why it has such a healthy balance of old and new, smoky ballads and urban beats.
Crucially, her debut collection reveals a singer who can deliver from the heart but who can also find light and shade, a lethal combination of Dinah Washington meets Lauryn Hill.
Amy grew up in Camden and got her first guitar from her parents at the age of 13. A stint at the Sylvia Young stage school finished when she was expelled for ”not applying herself” and for wearing a nose piercing. A move to an all-girls’ school ended up providing the catalyst for change. Hating the school so much, Amy locked herself away in her room from the age of 15 and concentrated on music. During lunch breaks, she’d be in the music room alone, playing guitar or piano.

It was the ”freeness of jazz” that appealed to her. She says: ”Just drums, bass, a trumpet or piano, that’s it for me. Four such simple elements, and brought together they would just fly. I think music now is very watered down and I think it’s not even music, a lot of it.”

After school, Amy started appearing with the Youth Jazz Orchestra but she got sidetracked with R&B, hip-hop, reggae and the jazz-filtered-through-hip-hop sounds of Erykah Badu.
Gradually and subconsciously, she found her own sound. ”I like the way it’s all mixed up,” she declares, ” that’s just me trying to manifest what’s in myself. It’s not pretence, it’s just soul. Music with soul.”
Vocally, Amy Winehouse is prodigious. One critic referred to her piano and voice album track You Sent Me Flying as an ”incendiary chandelier-shaking vocal”. Lyrically, she admits: ”I assume I’ll get pigeon-holed, it’s inevitable, but my music is pure and when I write I don’t have any preconceptions, I just write what I feel and I just hope that people will receive it as purely as I write it.”
Amy Winehouse, care of Universal Island Records, 22 St Peter’s Square, London, United Kingdom, W6 9NW. Telephone: +44 20 8910 3333.