Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [35]
Staying in the liberal press arena, the Observer made the track ‘Back to Black’ its single of the week and, even though reviewer Kitty Empire concluded that the second half of the album is weaker than the first, this matters not, because ‘Winehouse could release albums of knuckles cracking from here on in: her reputation is already assured.’
On the BBC website, Matt Harvey covered similar territory: ‘The second half of the album isn’t quite as good as the first, but that’s a minor gripe. One of the best UK albums of the year, with the added advantage that you’ll be able to pick it up at the local supermarket checkout…’
Rolling Stone magazine praised Ronson and Remi’s assured production, noting that it turns ‘classic soul sounds into something big, bright and punchy. The tunes don’t always hold up. But the best ones are impossible to dislike.’ In the Evening Standard, Chris Elwell-Sutton was also praising of the production, gushing, ‘To inject so much of her own mixed-up character into such hallowed musical formats was an extraordinary challenge. Luckily, Winehouse has the production, voice and strength of character to pull it off.’
John Lewis, in Time Out, said,
It’s brilliantly executed by producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, recalling the look-you’re-in-the-studio retro soul pastiches of labels like Desco and Daptone. But, crucially, Amy’s lyrics (like the lead single ‘Rehab’, with its splendid assault on therapy culture) retain the contemporary man-baiting obscenities of Frank.
In Attitude, Jamie Hakim wrote,
An unexpected departure from the jazz stylings of first album Frank, Amy comes across like Dinah Washington crossed with 60s girl group the Ronettes. There are also Motown references but overall the sound is darker, the sort of music that delinquents with switchblade scars would drag their backcombed girlfriends across the dancefloor to.
The Sunday Herald had this to say: ‘Where the original swayed, this one jitters, like a tetchy, frustrated Motown stomper, its urgent drums the perfect backing to the pleading, brash tones of Winehouse, with whom Ronson can seem to do no wrong.’
The Times said, ‘This one is tight, packed full of real old-fashioned songs in the manner of soul greats such as Dinah Washington’; and the Independent declared, ‘For her follow-up to Frank, Winehouse has shifted her emphasis from jazz to soulful R&B. It’s a measure of her talents that the shift should be so effective.’
Hadley Freeman of the Guardian said,
When I interviewed Winehouse in the summer of 2003 she was mouthy, unapologetic and undeniably curvy; by 2005 every tendon in her legs was on show when she was photographed looking lonely and miserable on a night out in London.
So, had Amy reinvented herself deliberately? Music critic Garry Mulholland rejects the notion that the Back to Black-era Amy is a wholesale reinvention of the Frank-era Amy. ‘I accept that she’s lost weight,’ he says. ‘But I don’t see it personally as she sat down one day and thought, “I’m going to be thinner and do faux Motown.” I see the second album as a continuation and development of the first album. I see her current look as a continuation and development of the look she had a few years ago. She’s a proper artist in the way that Bowie and Madonna are. I think every album she makes will have a different sound, and a different look to accompany it. That’s what you do, if you’re halfway decent. It’s just that nowadays we’re so unused to halfway decent that people think of it as an extraordinary thing.’
Amy has been compared to many artists, and Jennifer Nine managed an original and novel comparison in her review of the album on Yahoo Music. She said the album’s
fearless knack, along with the ability to get into the very soul of much-aped but rarely matched pop genres, hasn’t been done this well