‘Amy’: The song Billie Joe Armstrong in tribute to Amy Winehouse
For a long time, Californian pop-punks Green Day were in the commercial shadow of 1994’s Dookie. While releasing big-selling albums for the rest of the decade and winning a new place in the ‘adult contemporary’ world with 1997’s ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’, 2000’s Warning dropped to the same respectable levels of success—cutting a retrospectively unique character with its folk flourish at odds with the nu-metal trends of the day—but looked to set to continue on a wayward trajectory selling records to an ageing fanbase still sporting their Dookie shirts.
Conceiving a rock opera exploring 9/11‘s upending of America and the resulting War on Terror, 2004’s American Idiot proved to be the smash hit they were after. Exploding them further into the mainstream with its radio-friendly angst, the cover’s white arm holding a heart grenade littered the pop-punk and emo music world despite little cultural connection to the latter and saw the Rodeo “punk” band adorn the walls of a new generation of Athena against teenagers nearly 20 years after their formation.
Alienating one-half of their fanbase but wantonly deep-diving into their new era of stadium billing, Green Day continued with their conceptual narratives on 21st Century Breakdown but changed tack for their much-awaited ninth LP. Enjoying a bout of creativity, the band produced so many songs they decided to drop the ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré! Trilogy: three albums released across September and December 2012 that were unconcerned with political polemics and reigniting their love of three-chord rock and power pop.
The trilogy sold well enough and received a fairly warm critical reception, but didn’t seek to stake any new creative ground with its tepid garage-lite pap and weary lack of bite—a kid’s gloves version of punk that have called their credibility to question since the 1990s.
¡Dos! was notable for its closing track, however, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong penning a tribute to the late R&B soul singer Amy Winehouse on the sparse ‘Amy’. “I didn’t know her; I just thought it was a tragic loss,” he told NME. “It’s interesting because if you think about ¡Dos!, it’s a party record, and so at the end of it, maybe Amy kind of comes across as the consequences of the party”.
He added: “It happened last summer, around this time, I believe, and I just thought her music and her taste in music was so connected to old soul music and the original Motown and Otis Redding and Sam Cooke and things like that. And I think that was a major loss because that was a generation’s connection to that, and this was someone who should be here now, and I just felt really sad. Oh my god, this huge musical figure that just got lost and, you know, that sucks.”
Winehouse’s sad passing in 2011 struck a blow to the music world she authentically channelled, pouring pain and grit into her contralto vocals like the true heir to Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. Armstrong’s take was an apt one, Winehouse leaving a legacy of bared-soul performances that towered over the corporate wet flannel flumped over the charts at the time, a damp plap Green Day were a part of.
