Brandon's Buzz

Amy Winehouse — “Tears Dry On Their Own”
(from Back to Black) —

I have been swamped with other projects the past few days, so the Hive has unfortunately gotten short shrift as a result. Besides, even though the announcement was hardly a surprise, given everything we knew about her attitude and antics, I’m still struggling to wrap my brain around the idea that Winehouse — she whose phenomenal success as a brilliant-beyond-her-years throwback surely set the stage for something like Adele’s ball-busting breakout this year — is no longer with us. (Incidentally, shouldn’t someone do a study on why a non-trivial number of our most profoundly gifted artists — Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and now Miss Amy, to name but four — have, at the age of 27, died so tragically young? And that doesn’t even take into account a Jeff Buckley — a mere 30 when he drowned in a tragic accident — or a Shannon Hoon (28 when he overdosed)!) Every time over the past few days that I have devoted any mental energy to this story, I continually come to the great Natalie Cole — who, it must be noted, spent most of the late ’70s and early ’80s as high as five kites before staging one of the most thrilling comebacks in the history of popular music — and how incensed she was three years ago when Winehouse swept the Grammy Awards, winning five of the six trophies for which she was nominated, including Record of the Year for a tune that (of all things!) essentially mocked the efforts of drug rehabilitation. Cole’s take on the whole situation was that the Academy, in honoring such a seeming hot mess, was sending the message that nothing else matters if you’re talented, and that heinous behavior should be rewarded. I’m still not certain we want organizations like the Grammys to be arbiters of civic, social, and personal decorum, but, now that we have a clear(er) sense of how Winehouse’s story has apparently ended, part of me wonders if Cole doesn’t have a perfectly valid point. Part of me wonders if the staggering success that Winehouse achieved in such a lightning-quick flash of time is precisely what doomed her to the fate she always seemed to be barreling right toward. (Incidentally, speaking of Mr. Cobain: I’m spending the next few days in Seattle, so don’t be surprised to hear a grunge classic or two emanating from the Hive ‘fore the week’s up.)