Amy Winehouse: Lioness: Hidden Treasures – review
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Amy Winehouse: Lioness: Hidden Treasures [Island]
Vale Amy Winehouse. She died in July this year but it’s hard to shake the feeling that she’d been artistically dead for quite some time.
Certainly, that’s the impression given by Lioness: Hidden Treasures; a ragtag collection of cover versions, alternate takes and previously unreleased songs polished up and hustled together to cash in on the lucrative Christmas market.
That’s not to say this is a bad album. It’s just not the much-anticipated follow up to 2006′s Back In Black. Sadly, this posthumous compilation is probably as good as any third album would have been anyway given the circumstances.
Winehouse was pretty much finished as a singer. Sad but true. Her magnificent voice was almost shot from the drink, drugs and smoking-induced — cigarettes and otherwise — lung disease emphysema. And it was horribly apparent, after June’s Serbia debacle, that she wouldn’t tour again.
Despite its necessarily piecemeal composition Lioness: Hidden Treasures is a dignified send-off for Winehouse and that’s the best that can be hoped for. It’s nice to remember her this way and not that way.
Reggae-tinged Our Day Will Come – the first of several cover versions — opens proceedings and its sun-kissed youthful optimism is an early highlight. Only two tracks from the obviously troubled third album sessions make the cut — the doo-wop influenced Between The Cheats and Like Smoke — and they’re tellingly among the weakest songs featured. Rapper Nas is recruited to bolster Like Smoke‘s sound, so wispy is its foundation.
The inclusion of an original (and inferior) languid version of Black To Black‘s wonderful Tears Dry shows that the Winehouse recordings vault must be empty already. Best Friends, Right? which sees Winehouse air some pointed observations about a love/hate relationship is much better. As is Half Time‘s ode to how music is “stronger than all else”.
Well, almost all else as it turned out.
Winehouse’s much-publicised recent duet with old smooth crooner Tony Bennett, Body And Soul, pops up but it’s more a jazzy Bennett beat than a Winehouse joint. And another version of Valerie appears. This time it’s a slowed-down ’68 version, whatever that means. Its inclusion will nicely boost Liverpool indie band The Zutons‘ bank balances. It’s a damn fine song (again) though and they deserve it.
And another cover, Winehouse’s take on Carole King’s Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, is eerily affecting.
Fans will still love Amy Winehouse tomorrow. The tragedy is she couldn’t love herself a little more and live to see that tomorrow.
★★★★★
earworms: Our Day Will Come, Valerie (’68 Version), Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
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Amy Winehouse was a perfect example of an artist in complete artistic decline, no follow up album for 5 years since her mega hit in 2006 and everything since had been a soap opera played out in public as we all watched the inevitable conclusion. It is very doubtful if she had the ability to ever follow up Back In Black.
All one has to do is look at the videos of her live performances to know that, at her best, she remains the most important soul singer of the last 50 years, nobody comes anywhere near touching her high level excellence in technical skill and the deep structure of her emotional intuition about the contexts she put her voice into.
Her influence and legacy are significantly genre shifting, she established a frame for others to shine in for the next 50 years or so. Many are trying, few get close, so far.
She f..ked up and died.
F..king up does not suddenly disqualify or negate the contemporary relevance or the long term impact of the work.
But she had the ability to make “Back To Black”, which was the only mainstream pop record I’ve enjoyed for about thirty years.
Eric Sykes: You’re almost as funny as your namesake. “The most important soul singer of the last 50 years” ? Way over the top! Let’s rattle off a few names shall we? Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Dusty Springfield, Mavis Staples, Etta James etc
There’s a quick half dozen who really have set the frame for the past 50 years! No doubt Winehouse had some talent, however she died well before she could establish any frame for others to shine for the next 50 years or so, one hit album does not make a legend. It was a good album, so was Diamond Life by Sade.
“Her influence and legacy are significantly genre shifting” I doubt it! I suspect she will be a forgotten legacy sooner than you think..
Johnfromplanetearth…”Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Dusty Springfield, Mavis Staples, Etta James…” yes indeed of course, and all cutting sides over 50 years ago, my point exactly.
IMHO Winehouse had listened and learned well; but the important point dear sir is that she pushed the entire soul form into the post-modern, she caught soul up. There is now before Winehouse, and after Winehouse. The only one who gives Amy a run for the money is Macy Gray, who I would argue, Amy stole the backbeat from.
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