Amy Winehouse In Her Words – Amy Winehouse

When Amy scooped five awards at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2008, it was the moment that defined her career. Appearing by live satellite link-up to Los Angeles from London’s Riverside Studios, where we joined her, Amy threw herself into one of the most celebratory performances we had ever enjoyed with her. The global recognition of the Grammys meant everything to Amy, and to us. But it was four years previous, in 2004, when Amy was handed her first Ivor Novello Award, that she was most proud.

The day after the ceremony, she carried the lead-heavy statuette on London’s Piccadilly Line to Janis’s house. ‘I got it, Mum! Here, it’s for you,’ she told Janis as she rummaged in her handbag and pulled it out. Eventually, Amy would go on to win three Ivor Novellos throughout her career. The prestigious annual award is given for songwriting and composition, and behind the drama of her personal life, that is ultimately how Amy wanted to be recognised – as a songwriter and a composer.

‘I never want to be mediocre,’ she told us. Manufactured X-Factor pop was never going to satisfy Amy – she wrote her lyrics and melodies from the heart. Many artists talk about waiting for the perfect song to drop into their lap from the heavens. For them, writing is a labour of love, but for Amy, songs seemed to fall easily. Every now and then it was as if a lightbulb went on in her head.

She’d disappear to a quiet place for a while and put together a few chords. A song would emerge, then a whole album. ‘How do you do it? Do you write the melodies or the lyrics first?’ Mitch asked her one day. ‘Oh, come on, Dad! Everyone can do it!’ she laughed. Except everyone couldn’t. That was Amy – she had very little understanding of just how brilliant she was.

Famously in one interview, she said of Janis: ‘I thought everyone could sing, until I heard my mum.’ It wasn’t until after Amy’s passing, when we started sifting through her writings and drawings collected from her early childhood, that we started to understand more of how, behind that casual attitude, Amy been carefully honing her talent for years. Whichever house we lived in, her bedroom became her safe haven and a place she would always take herself off to work in.

We were never shown much of what she produced there – it was always top secret.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: a69c7f959e06e95e
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 320,856,335 bytes (305.992 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9780063342194, 9780063305410
• Pages: 252
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 60.59 minutes
• Total Words: 12,117
• Total Characters: 68,459
• Average Words per Page: 48.08
• Average Characters per Page: 271.66

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