It was the most overt and major stain on her. A scarlet F for Fool. And yet, it was the very thing that propelled her career to the heights of the stratosphere (even though the thermosphere is higher): falling for a git like Blake Fielder-Civil. Loving him is what went hand in hand with fueling her self-destructive behavior. And let us not forget, Fielder-Civil was obliged to openly admit he introduced Amy to crack and heroin. Not exactly the best drug to become fond of as the spotlight rained down on her with a searing pressure post-2006.
In the years that followed Winehouse’s death in 2011, there were women who continued to sing about falling for the wrong man and being heartbroken as a result (namely, Lana Del Rey), but it was never as tinged with the sinister despair that colored most of Winehouse’s brief oeuvre. It was never about a man who introduced her to drugs or slapped her around (even if only “figuratively”)–try as Lana might to repurpose the line, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” for herself. Regarding that old “chestnut,” it was the very line that could sum up the entire feeling one got while listening to Winehouse’s music. She herself was so enamored of and enraptured by the girl group music of that era—dominated by Phil Spector-produced acts like The Ronettes and The Crystals. And, of course, there was the tragedian flair of The Shangri-Las (surprisingly not produced by Spector) that also spoke to Winehouse’s image of how a love ought to be, to feel. So overpowering—no matter how toxic—that it walloped you not only metaphorically, but literally. The kind of love that, more often than not, only people in their youth are associated with being capable of because of the intensity and energy-draining it requires. Winehouse was twenty-two when she wrote the songs that would appear on 2006’s Back to Black, spurred to put her pain to paper when Fielder-Civil broke up with her in August 2005 to go back to his girlfriend. Yet even if “can’t live without each other” love is deemed a puerile concept, Winehouse gets it across with an eloquent, poetic sincerity rarely achieved in mainstream music. And no, even her “successor,” Adele, can’t compare.
Interestingly, the irony of the fact that it was Back to Black that would launch her to such success and worldwide fame was that it positioned her as the “weak female” within the record’s narrative thread. The delicate flower. Fragile, and easily galvanized to wallow in the self-destructive tendencies of depression. Whereas her debut, Frank, conveyed the image of a far more arrogant, cocksure (no innuendo intended) woman. The lead single, “Stronger Than Me” was a mocking, railing indictment of the frangible male that was becoming more and more common in the 00s (when the term “metrosexual” was still kosher). As one of her first peddled-to-a-wide-audience compositions based on a relationship, this song was about Chris Taylor, a man seven years her senior (as called out in the song) that she met while working at World Entertainment News Network. Initially “crazy” about him, her passions dissipated when she found him to be too sensitive, inspiring the lyrics, “Why’d you always put me in control?/All I need is for my man to live up to his role/You always want to talk it through/I’m okay/I always have to comfort you every day/But that’s what I need you to do, are you gay?” Naturally, in the present climate of hyper-political correctness, such a comparison to the “homo stereotype” of being dainty and squeamish would have been met with outrage. Yet Winehouse was always disdaining of effete men. Even a documentary-style interview with her (by Kelly Osbourne) during which she was asked if she considered herself an icon was met with the shruggingly derisive response, “Only to gays.”
Her sense of old-fashioned views when it came to a man “living up to his role”—especially if a woman was still expected to—undeniably stemmed from the behavior she saw from her father, Mitch, in her youth. The roguish philanderer, the “man’s man,” this was the archetype that would infect Winehouse’s perception of what masculinity should be, therefore what a relationship should feel like. At the same time, she herself began to adopt the machismo of a cheating man as though to emulate her patriarch. All of this psychological pastiche would be explored in extremely personal depth on the track, “What Is It About Men,” on Frank. Crooning, “Emulate all the shit my mother hate/I can’t help but demonstrate my Freudian fate/My alibi for taking your guy/History repeats itself, it fails to die/And animal aggression is my downfall/I don’t care ’bout what you got, I want it all,” Winehouse, acknowledging the fatal flaw of being drawn to cads, delivers the prophecy of her inevitable downfall with the line, “My destructive side has grown a mile wide.”
Other songs on the album would empower her in terms of imitating the same thing men have done for centuries, including “I Heard Love Is Blind” and “In My Bed,” in which Winehouse talks about her own cheating and noncommittal attachment with the same blithe nonchalance as a man. Thus, it seemed societally salient that the masses would gravitate more toward material that framed her as the jilted woman unable to function after being cast aside on Back to Black.
During an interview after the album’s release, Winehouse had commented, “I’m a quite insecure person, I’m not gonna do stuff that makes me feel like an idiot.” And yet, allowing Fielder-Civil back into her life—particularly at the all too suspicious moment when she had reached international fame—was a strong exemplification of idiocy. Or at least not thinking with her head. How could she be expected to at such a young age? Still under twenty-five; there’s a reason people say you’re not even a fully formed person until then, therefore shouldn’t try to build your life around someone you think you’re in love with.
Particularly if that person is more in love with drugs than he is with you, which was very clearly the case with Fielder-Civil. Winehouse’s willingness to do anything that he did was, in her mind, a way of showing her unwavering devotion. Had she exhibited this behavior in 2020, would she have been deemed even nearly as resonant to listeners in the demographic that flocked to her then? The generation of the present isn’t even “moved” by drugs (least of all alcohol), preferring to become ensnared by the screen when they’re not otherwise, let’s be honest, somewhat flaccidly trying to engage in a “healthy” lifestyle. To boot, the increasing genderlessness of everything (try as gender reveal parties might to lock children down into a trope from the moment of their birth) doesn’t bode well for the future of the heteronormative songwriting of Winehouse’s variety, being the lone wolf of her era already in this regard. Arguably the final era that would “allow” such a blatant glorification of a man treating a woman like shit and her coming back for more as she told herself it was true love.
While some will still hold up Lana as the “replacement” in this respect, even Del Rey has been forced to evolve her subject matters away from the toxic love motifs that made her famous on Born to Die and Ultraviolence, despite still being eye-rolled at and accused of being a bit of a misogynist herself. An accusation not best-deflected with her making comments like, “I’m not not a feminist.” What’s more, even looking at Taylor Swift’s latest foray into “artful” songwriting with Folklore, the obsession of fans around interpreting “Betty” as a queer love triangle (it’s not, obviously, because Taylor is pretty fucking garden variety hetero) is indicative that no one is buying into The Crystals’ version of relationships anymore. Nor are they that interested. It begs the question, with the de-emphasis on heterosexual relationships being the “norm,” how much could songwriting of this bent really last anyway in a climate that no longer looks at such a perspective as “glamorous” or “romantic,” so much as rather pathetic?
A Sid and Nancy for the twenty-first century, Winehouse and Fielder-Civil delivered the show that the ghouls of the media wanted to see, to absorb in their headlines. Winehouse’s manager stated that he told her during this period, “‘Love is in some ways killing me.’ She felt torn between those two things”—pleasing Fielder-Civil by engaging in this “connection” of drugs they shared or taking the path toward improving her health that would have driven a wrench between them. One that was to be driven regardless when Field-Civil went to prison for the better part of ’08 and the beginning of ’09, by which time Winehouse had defected from London for a prolonged jaunt in St. Lucia.
Yet his absence didn’t prevent her from using. Just as Bobby’s didn’t prevent Whitney’s. Indeed, very much like Whitney Houston, Winehouse had a gift that came naturally to her. It didn’t need to be honed, when she opened her mouth, it simply came out. Doing drugs was thus looking a gift horse in the mouth by serving only to destroy her instrument. These correlations between the two would perhaps be what compelled Del Rey to sing on Lust For Life’s “Get Free,” “For Amy and for Whitney, and all my birds of paradise.”
“I believe you only get to be in love once,” Winehouse once said. If that was the case, hers was wasted on the person who cared the least, manifest in any interview Fielder-Civil gave about her. And yet, it was a love that spoke to the world through the music it generated. At least in that moment in history. And maybe there was a reason Amy could never make another album: she could never feel that way again. Or go through such an all-consuming love again. It literally killed her. Sam Beste, her pianist, said of her final performance in Belgrade in 2011, which she couldn’t stomach getting through, “The material felt so tired, and didn’t really feel relevant to her anymore.” Yet it was the material that brought her the accursed fame she never really wanted. Because women, at this juncture, were still willing to put up with a lot more shit, therefore identify with what Winehouse was singing about.
“I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean,” Winehouse said of the title “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss).” Shrugging off the controversy it still bears for its overt implications of domestic violence, she couldn’t deny relating to it. The pain with Blake was pleasure, the masochist had found the sadist—and it all fueled the cauldron of Winehouse’s creativity.
“I fell in love with someone who I would’ve died for,” she mused during one of her media blitzkriegs. And that is what she did, ultimately. Is that something that will “resonate” in either a world of robots or a world in which all women have finally come to terms with men’s inutility?
