Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
 

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One of my Top 5 albums of last year - Amy Winehouse's Back To Black - finally gets a US release tomorrow. I've been listening to it for a few months now and absolutely love it. It's the retro soul album Christina Aguilera wishes she made.

The Entertainment Weekly review of the CD (A-, btw) says that "Addicted" was left off of the album for no apparent reason, which is a shame. But we do get one bonus track - the version of "You Know I'm No Good" with Ghostface Killah.

It's on sale for around $8 at the major retailers this week. For that price, this album's a steal.

I downloaded one track from allofmp3.com before my balance ran out and I loved it. For 8 bucks this would be a CD quite worth owning...thanks for the reminder that this is coming out!

All right, so I'm sold on Amy Winehouse, picked up the CD. I have to say, though, that this is some of the worst sound quality I've ever heard on a CD. What's with all the distortion?

She was going for a 60's girlband sound, like the crappy "wall of sound" thing Spector is famous for.

Try out her first album Frank. It's more R&B but good nonetheless.

Naw, this was recording quality. I understand the sound she's going for, but this is breaking up at the high end. A fault of the pressing, I'm pretty sure.

She's got a great voice, no doubt. But it's a shame that it seems as if she'll end up with alcohol poisoning sooner than later.

I watched a BBC 1 performance she did, and after each song she would take a gulp of something in a clear dixie cup. By the end of the show she was basically mumbling to the music.

I've been listening to this album all month. Great stuff.

awesome retro sound with a freshness to it.

Sounds great, very sexy. It doesnt sound fake, like many retro bands or albums end up sounding. They usually end up sounding like a mimic of the music they are trying to sound like. Very rarely do they actually end up sounding like they could have came from the same period.

I dig her...alot.

That's too bad. Just got introduced to her music and this is the type of performer that I could never get sick of.

For those digging her disc, you'll want to check out Mark Ronson's upcoming album Version (he produced Winehouse's album and some of Lilly Allen's songs). It's a bunch of cover songs, but with an upbeat 60's soul vibe to it. Winehouse and Allen both lend vocals to the album.

It's already been leaked. Good stuff. Hope it gets a US release.

I doubt it's a faulty pressing. I got a rip of the album (from the UK version, likely) last year and thought the same about the quality. The US CD that I bought sounds exactly the same. If it was a bad pressing when it was originally released, you'd think they'd fix it.

Still, I love this album.

Late bloomer here. Just heard it for the first time this weekend in it's entirety. This album is the shit. Wow wow wow!!! Very retro, very very cool.

Just heard it yesterday.

HOLY CRAP this shit is good!

BTW, the alt rock station on XM is playing REHAB, and the TOP 20 station has IM NO GOOD in heavy rotation, so she's getting some mainstream (sattelite) pop

I bought the album a couple of days ago, and for the life of me cannot figure out why this has a parental advisory sticker on it? I didnt' hear any swearing at all on the disc, or maybe i need to give it more listens. Nice change of pace compared to the stuff i usually listen to. This is actually stuff that my mom would like as well (very 60's motown sound)

Listen harder to Me & Mr. Jones, I'm No Good, and a couple others. SHe drops several F bombs, S bombs, and others lol.

Me too. I do not listen to this kind of music but damn, it's so infectious. I keep going back and forth from the new NIN to Amy. Night and day.

I promise I'm not trying to threadcrap but I can't understand why everyone thinks she is so great. I saw this video of her and Charlotte Church singing "Beat It" (Featured below) and I thought she was absolutely awful. I then opened this thread and could not believe what I was reading. So I said to myself, "Maybe she had a bad night or was a little drunk or something." No, her album sounds the same way. I mean, I hear that the music is interesting, a cool 60s Motown sound and all but her voice is atrocious.
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Actually, she was wasted like a motherfucker in that vid. I mean, wouldn't you have to be 1) to sing "Beat It" and 2) to be on Charlotte Church's TV special and have there not be any boob feel-age?

That video is just pathetic. -ohbfrank-

My wife likes the album a lot, but as far as I'm concerned Winehouse is a horrible singer and a general waste of oxygen as a person.

You cannot compare her singing in that video to the album. You just can't. And as far as calling her a waste of oxygen, I'll take her over 95% of the crap on the airwaves and charts any day.

I'm familiar with her albums, so I'm therefore familiar with her vocals in as ideal environment as possible. The 'waste of oxygen' comment was more in reference to her public behavior than her music, which I consider lame and inferior to 95% of what gets played at my house on a given day. But pardon me for expressing an opinion contrary to yours.

Of course you can't, the album is cleaned up and edited to make her a good singer.

When you smoke all my weed man...

I think both her CDs are great. I don't know much about her as a celebrity, but her CDs are fantastic and that's all I care about. I am very grateful to a friend for nagging me to check her out. I listened to Back to Black and ordered Frank the next day. I only wish there were more songs for me to get.

I'm sorry, I thought this thread was about her album and not her as a celebrity. What does that have to do with her music? If I gave a crap how some of my favorite artists/singers behaved in public, I probably wouldn't listen to any of them.

My original post (the one to which you took exception) devoted five words to her video performance, nine to her celebrity 'status' and 18 to my opinion of her last album. In other words, the bulk of my post was on the same topic as this thread.

She says

"What kind of fuckery is this?"

about 10 times in Me and Mr Jones.

Amy's on the Tonight Show tonight (4/24).

I guess I'm just easily amused, but when I was watching RagingBull's video, I was noticing that in the post below, Rogue's avatar was synced up to the beat... rotfl

(and yeah, she sounded completely wasted and horrible there...)

That video sure did suck.

But I've seen her live (last month at SXSW), and let me tell you - she's the real deal. Out of dozens (and dozens...) of the acts I saw that week, she was one of the only ones that stood out as being something special. Great band, great sound, great voice. (And I could care less about her public image and all that crap - it's about the music...)

I'm so distrustful of what the record labels are pushing on people (James Blunt for example) that it sometimes takes me weeks or months to even bother reading up on newer solo artists. Glad I finally watched a couple of Amy's vids on YouTube. This is some great music. If I had known a couple of tunes would be like smushing together Portishead and Etta James (or Ronnie Spector maybe a better example) I would have been all over this back in '03.

For somebody looking to buy this album, which version would you guys recommend? The Import version with 'addicted' on it or the US release with 'you know im no good'?

Since You Know I'm No Good is the best song on the album...

"You Know I'm No Good" is on every version of the album. The eleventh track on the U.K/Ireland version is a song called "Addicted," while the U.S. version's eleventh track is a shorter cut of "You Know I'm No Good" featuring Ghostface Killa.

I went with the U.K. version. I'd rather have one more original song than some remix version of a song I've already got.

I agree. Ghostface doesn't really add much substance and the music and Amy's vocals are exactly the same on the remix. The import is the better choice, IMO, as "Addicted" is good song.

I bought the domestic release the day it came out, but had previously downloaded the import (months before the US release), so I got both songs. There's that option.

I've got a live set she did in Amsterdam earlier this year with songs from Back to Black, Frank and the Zutons track she covers on Mark Ronson's album. I'd be happy to upload it, but I don't know if that's allowed or not. It isn't an officially released album or anything...

I've never heard of her before haering "Rehab" recently. I kind like her sound.

However... is this the same chick? I'm not sure how old these pics are but she's got "issues" :eek::( She looked like she was somewhere in between these on the MTV Movie Awards.


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It's the same person. Back in 2003 when she debut with Frank no one gave 2 shits about her music. All they talked about was her trash-talking about other artists and her weight (as you can see from the picture, it wasn't even that bad).

She looks much better in the first pic, in my opinion. Just body-wise. Not even talking about all the tattoos and piercings and shit.

She seems to be ingesting way more heroin nowadays hence the smaller body. I agree that she looked pretty damn sexy back then as well.

Wow, she looks very nice in that 1st pic, not so nice in the 2nd....

Yeah, I came across a BBC performance during her Frank period. Only one tatt. No silly "hair up in a bun like the girl groups of the 60's". Just like the first pic. Man, she was smokin hot.

Now? Not so much.