Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [5]
One music writer was more concise concerning where Amy fits among the modern-day female acts: ‘She’s like Joss Stone with a bit of mud on her dress.’ It was intended as a compliment. Another celebrity fan who appreciated the stand Amy took for her sisters is Ally McBeal star Jane Krakowski. ‘She can do hip-hop, jazz and soul. She’s telling interesting stories from a woman’s perspective.’ Not that Amy considers herself a women’s libber. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.’
As a female artist, Amy has had to contend with being judged disproportionately for the way she looks. With her fluctuating weight and the other by-products of her partying lifestyle, she has at times given the sharp claws of the tabloid press plenty to go at. Her lifestyle, too, seems to be judged disproportionately harshly because she is a woman. When she has missed concerts, or turned up on stage late and the worse for wear, she has received far more censure than, say, Pete Doherty of Babyshambles or Shane MacGowan of the Pogues would. Indeed, those artists’ wilder ways seem to have if anything increased their street cred. However, when Amy follows suit she is a ‘disgrace’ and ‘threat to our very way of life’. The miserable Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell is a regular critic of Amy, saying, ‘It used to be left to Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis to behave badly. Now women are the hooligans. How sad.’
This relentless criticism has led to enormous pain for Amy at times. ‘I’m an insecure person,’ she says. ‘I’m very insecure about the way I look. I mean, I’m a musician, I’m not a model. The more insecure I feel, the more I’d drink.’ However, those who have a sense of style are positive about her. Karl Lagerfeld, for instance, is one of the most influential fashion designers on the planet. The slim, snowy-haired friend of the likes of Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue said, ‘She’s a style icon. She is a beautiful, gifted artist. And I very much like her hairdo. I took it as an inspiration, because, in fact, it was also Brigitte Bardot’s hairdo in the late fifties and sixties. And now Amy has made it her own style. So, when I saw her, I knew it was the right moment. Amy is the new Brigitte.’
Victoria Beckham, too, has praised Amy’s sense of style and also revealed that she is a fan of her music. ‘Amy has a real sense of style that I just love. She’s very much a fashion icon and I adore what she wears. She’s so unique and original.’ She added, ‘I’ve never met her but I just love her music – she’s an amazing singer.’
It says much about the wildly differing perceptions there are of Amy that, in the week that Lagerfeld and Beckham spoke out in praise of her style, an American poll voted her the ‘dirtiest female celebrity’. She grabbed 47 per cent of the vote. Then, in a survey of 323 men aged sixteen to forty-four by the lads’ magazine Nuts, she came top of the poll with 48 per cent of the vote as the female celebrity readers would least like to kiss under the mistletoe. Coming second was her new-found admirer Victoria Beckham with 24 per cent of the votes. Then, bizarrely, Amy came third in a poll asking British poker players whom they would least like to come up against during a game of poker.
However, in the really significant poll of that week, Amy was triumphant. Apple’s iTunes online music store revealed that Back to Black was its bestselling download of 2007. The album Version by Mark Ronson – including her rendition of ‘Valerie’ – came third. Soon after this, Back to Black landed the top spot in Maxim magazine’s end-of-year readers’ album poll, beating Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Kanye West’s Graduation.
Even those who have thrown insults at Amy, though, are wasting their breath, for she is harder on herself than anyone could be towards her. ‘I’ve also had offers to do modelling and stuff. But I’m, like, “Are they mad?” I’m not exactly an oil painting, am I?’ she once said. Again, here are contradictions,