The two singers that shaped Amy Winehouse: “I learned from everything”
The fact it’s been nearly 15 years since Amy Winehouse passed away is heartbreaking. She was one of the most influential artists of a generation, who refused to give in to the outside world’s demands and, like so many creatives of such consequence, had her demons. Yet, for all of the melancholy that featured in her life, her records remain a testament to her incandescent flare.
Although Winehouse is remembered as a tragic artist, this notion often overshadows her talents. Not only was she a fantastic singer, but she also appreciated great art in all its forms, with her just as much of a punk as she was a soul singer.
Her list of musical loves also reflects how she is not the one-dimensional character that popular narratives depict her as. She had a better record collection than most, and her affinity for the greats gave her the inspiration to pursue her talents and make a career out of them. Given the assortment of music she discussed, it also prompts questions about what direction her career might have taken if she’d lived. There’s a high chance she’d still be at the forefront of the industry today.
Reflecting this artistic substance is that when Winehouse was younger, she didn’t actually listen to much soul, the genre she’s now deemed inextricable from. As a child and in her early teens, she listened to hip-hop and jazz, and it was only after she got into Motown’s girl groups that she was introduced to the other genre that, alongside those above, her work would sit at the nexus of.
That then gave Winehouse a route into gospel legends such as Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin, who, in addition to possessing great voices, often sang about matters of the soul, as she would later do, creating real profundity by taking this lyrical tact and heightening it with the raw power of their delivery. She might not have been religious, but for this reason, she found the Gospel incredibly inspirational, and it showed her early on that music was her idol.
Given her inherent ear for great music, Winehouse even listened to Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, and, most surprisingly, Northern Irish rockers Therapy when she was in primary school due to the influence of her older brother. Still, her dalliance with this environment was short. She discovered Salt-n-Pepa when on the verge of secondary school, which started her moving in a more soulful direction. Her brother would also play a crucial role in engrossing herself in jazz. He started listening to jazz at 18, when his sonic proclivities were expanding, and hearing Thelonious Monk’s ”Round Midnight’ under his door was pivotal for her life’s trajectory.
In terms of singers, there were two who shaped Winehouse more than any others, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington, two pioneers of jazz, who demonstrated that it wasn’t just a man’s world.
“Sarah Vaughan is one of my favourite singers of all time. She was an instrument. I’ve heard one record; it’s like a humming solo, and she sounds like a reed instrument – like a clarinet,” she explained to The Guardian in 2006. “I came to Sarah Vaughan later: I was about 18. And I learned to sing from Dinah Washington and from stuff like [Thelonious] Monk. It wasn’t just the vocal jazz – I learned from everything, really.”
A truly unique artist, Amy Winehouse brilliantly channelled the work of her heroes into her sound. After reading her comment about Vaughan and Washington, their expressive fire becomes evident at the forefront of her style.
