Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [33]
Next up, the album slows into the sparse, groovy ‘You Know I’m No Good’. Blending jazz and R&B, the song is supported by a catchy saxophone line. The lyric concerns Amy’s confession of infidelity. However, far from being furious with her for her cheating, when her lover catches her out, he merely shrugs it off. In common with several tracks on her albums, the traditional tune is contrasted by a distinctly modern-day lyric with its mentions of skull T-shirts, chips and pitta. ‘You Know…’ was used to promote the television show Mad Men and as the opening to ITV’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Arctic Monkeys covered it on Jo Wiley’s Live Lounge on Radio 1.
While ‘You Know…’ is a little moody and dirty, the doo-wop fun of ‘Me and Mr Jones’ soon lightens the mood with its sauntering, 1940s feel. Amy bellows out the lyric in a style reminiscent of Dinah Washington. But what are those words about? The Mr Jones of the title is believed to be rapper and Salaam Remi act Nas Jones. The link would seem to be the mention of Destiny, the name of Jones’s child with ex-girlfriend Carmen, and of the number 14, because 14 September is the birthday that Winehouse and Nas share. Amy berates him for making her miss a Slick Rick gig. However, she remains in awe of him, her second favourite black Jew after ‘Sammy’ (presumably Sammy Davis Jr). She might let him make it up to her, she says, and suggests they try again on Saturday.
‘A rapper like Nas can tell a story about being in a room, and you feel like you’re standing in the corner of that room,’ she has explained. ‘You know the way it smells, and if someone’s smoking.’ Her music has the same quality and nowhere is this more true than on ‘Me And Mr Jones’.
‘Just Friends’ maintains the lighter mood. With its gorgeous jazz inflections and Amy’s Aretha Franklin-style delivery, it bounces along joyfully. Amy wonders whether she and the man in question can ever be just friends. Although she doesn’t resolve the question during the song, and although she is singing of hurt and pain, the music remains upbeat, as does the atmosphere. Which is just as well, as the next song, the titular ‘Back to Black’, is as dark as they come. Perhaps her most sombre tune, ‘Back to Black’ is the ultimate heartbreak song and Amy’s pain oozes from it like blood. To a doomladen backdrop of reverb guitar, strings and bells, Amy sings of the heartache and despair she feels at the infidelity of her lover. The lyric is almost suicidal, speaking of dying a hundred times and the ultimate low: going back to black.
‘There’s never a dull moment with Amy… and that includes her album’s title track, a gorgeously opulent-but-bitter tale of a tangled love affair gone wrong,’ cheered the Sunday Mirror, when ‘Back to Black’ was released as a single. ‘It’s impossibly smooth and ridiculously good. She is simply on fire on this track,’ purred the Scottish Daily Record. Music Week added that the single is ‘a choice cut so soulful you can almost smell the bar-room smoke while listening to it’. The Financial Times is a fan of this song, too, one reviewer saying it sounds ‘like the sort of brilliantly florid lament that Ennio Morricone used to write for spaghetti westerns’.
Musically, the song has been compared to both ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Jimmy Mack’ by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. The descending melody matches the descending mood of Amy as she deals with her heartbreak and pain. Manchester’s Evening News described ‘Back to Black’ on its release as ‘one of the best singles of the year’. It’s hard to argue. It has been covered by the Rumble Strips and was also sung on The X Factor by the hopeful girl band Hope.
If you want a heartbreak song but one that soothes the soul rather than plunges it into deeper agony, then ‘Love is a Losing Game’ is for you. Again, any sense of redemption is absent from the lyric but it does at least have a calm and resigned feel to it. Musically, a ballad with wonderful strings and a guitar line that has been compared to both the Isley Brothers and Curtis Mayfield,