Fresh from her triumphant performance at the Brits where she picked up the British Female Solo Artist award, Amy Winehouse has her much anticipated new single, ”Back To Black”, released on April 16th through Island Records. The single is the title track from Amy’s stunning album “Back To Black”, which this week re-gained the no. 1 slot, and looks set to go triple –platinum in a matter of weeks with sales fast approaching the 900,000 mark. Amy is currently in the middle of her sell-out UK tour which will be followed by her first ever US tour. The American dates kick off with a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City where Amy will also mark her US television debut with a performance on the David Letterman Show.
It’s been a fantastic few months for Amy since the release, at the end of October ’06, of her anthemic single “Rehab”. “Rehab” entered the chart at no. 7 and was followed by “Back To Black” which was released to universal acclaim and finished the year topping many end of year polls. A second single, “You Know I’m No Good”, featuring Ghostface Killah, was released in January and gave Amy her second big hit. Two Brit nominations, a South Bank Show award and an Elle Style award followed before Amy scooped the British Best Female last week at Earl’s Court. Amy’s live shows feature songs drawn from her platinum debut “Frank” and “Back To Black”. “Frank” established Amy as one of the most exciting and challenging artists in pop music, and “Back To Black” proves, beyond any reasonable or unreasonable doubt, what a truly remarkable talent she is. Winehouse’s song-writing and fearlessness as a lyric writer has been grafted onto some of the most astonishing material of her short career so far. “Back To Black” sees her teaming up once again with “Frank” producer Salaam Remi and, for the first time, with New Yorker Mark Ronson (Lily Allen, Robbie Williams and Christina Aguilera).
Two years ago, following the success of “Frank”, Amy began thinking about what she’d like to do with her second record. “Frank” was her grand and suitably blunt-speaking break-up record, and it won her a battalion of fans around the world, marking her out as one of the most distinct new voices in pop; confessional, elemental and with that rarest of combinations: humour and soul. “I didn’t want to play the jazz thing up too much again. I was bored of complicated chord structures and needed something more direct. I’d been listening to a lot of girl-groups from the fifties and sixties. I liked the simplicity of that stuff. It just gets to the point.” You can hear it on the subtley Supremes-referencing intro of “Back To Black”. But her reach stretches further. While the girl-groups of the sixties to which she had become enthralled contained their vocals, Amy can break loose with Aretha-style vocal stylings on “Just Friends” or by turning the whole idea of drying out into a gospel spiritual on the stunning opener “Rehab”. “Love is a Losing Game” is pure classic modern song-writing: brief, to the point and drenched in emotion. Other highlights include the Nas inspired “Me and Mr Jones”, the beautiful “Wake Up Alone”, “I’m No Good”, the personal epiphany that you can behave just as badly as all those guys that have messed you around and stamped all over you, and the bluesy smooch of the title track, “Back To Black”. Feb 2008 saw Amy Winehouse honoured with 5 of the US Recording Academy’s most prestigious awards: Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Best New Artist, Song of the Year (Rehab) and Record of the Year (Rehab) at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. This incredible haul makes Amy the first ever British female artist to win 5 Grammys in one night and sees her join Lauryn Hill (1998), Alicia Keys (2001), Norah Jones (2002) and Beyonce (2003) in the elite band of female artists who have won 5 awards in one evening.
The Grammys cap a remarkable 18 months for this hugely talented and unique artist. During that time “Back To Black”, her second album (and the biggest selling UK album of 2007), has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and turned Amy into one of the hottest stars in the world. Widely regarded as a modern day masterpiece by critics and fans alike the phenomenal UK chart success has been mirrored in the US where “Back To Black” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at no. 7 making Amy the highest debuting British female artist in the history of the US albums chart. The critical response to the record has been every bit as impressive and in addition to the Grammy’s Amy has picked up a series of awards including a Brit, South Bank Show Award, Ivor Novello, Mojo, Glamour, Elle Style Award, Mobo, MTV Europe’s Artists’ Choice Award and Q Award for Album of the Year. Meanwhile Amy’s 2003 debut album ‘Frank’ has now gone double platinum selling an incredible 300,000 copies in 2007 alone.