The "Winehouse Phenomenon"

–They tried to make me go to stage school, but I said: No, no, no.

It’s not very often that you can do this. But, encased in the first 20 seconds of the interview below is the exact moment that I got ‘limp-dick’ for a particular singer.

In truth, I was never a huge fan of Amy Winehouse. I have, in my time, bought four Winehouse' tracks: Love Is A Losing Game, Tears Dry On Their Own, Valerie & Monkey Man. It wasn't the 'drugs thing' that bothered me, although I could never quite understand why she didn’t self-medicate in the privacy of her own home - like everyone else does. The tats, the weight-loss, the chutzpah and the contrived inner-city mockney-ness; none of it bothered me. See, I haven’t got any tattoos – I’ve got scars. So, I pride myself on knowing the real thing when I see it. However, I also understand that we all 'front it' from time-to-time. In fact, the first thing I said to Rick Parry when I came out of the Anfield boardroom, on the successful completion of my first presentation, which secured me a prestigious writing job was: “I don’t normally talk like that…I don’t know what happened to me? I sounded like Lady Diana.” He smiled and advised - sweetly I thought - “Just be yourself.”

Now, I know I’m gonna make somebody mad when I say this, but to me, Amy (while entertaining enough) is not the real thing. She is essentially, a suburban, stage school, drug addict from a nuclear family, who does a pretty good job of performing a pastiche of jazz, doo-wop and ska acts, whilst ‘borrowing’ heavily from Motown & funk. Furthermore, she’s got absolutely no business disrespecting the late Billie Holiday (upon whose shoulders she’s stood) by saying “Fuck-her,” as she patently did when being interviewed by Huey Morgan at the Brits.

A Liverpool FC supporter once described me (in an LFC chat room) as: a fucked-up looking Minnie Driver, whose face was covered in oil and couldn’t write for shit! I took it on the chin. And with that in mind, I'm sure Amy can take it too. – I don’t care how successful you are, how much money you’ve got, how many awards you win or how many people are gonna hate me for writing this. You [Amy Winehouse] are NOT the real thing. And until you apologize for the way you hated-on Billie Holiday, I could never be your friend and moreover, I’m gonna boycott your music. Cos, as Alice Walker writes in her divine blog: boycotts must happen in the heart.

By way of an antidote to the ‘Winehouse Phenomenon’ - below (in my humble opinion) IS the real thing…

And…

Oh yeah, and…

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