Amy Winehouse – Someone should have given her the music without the pain, just the music.
The problem with that is that the two, music and pain, have lived in the same townhouse for centuries. She was convinced in her mind that she loved Blake, her incarcerated Blake; the twin she never should have been reunited with (though she would have met him in her head at some point in her life all the same). Together they were Whitney and Bobby: The Sequel. It’s like Whitney and Bobby swung toward one extreme end of a pendulum swing while Amy and Blake stretched out to be on the other end of the same object. They were opposite each other, especially because of the generational gap, but the unfortunate, vivid difference is that Amy and Blake were more accentuated in their destruction.
Music and Blake were her gods. Her rebellious nature from childhood and the media that came with the fame were only vicious spectators who fed off from watching her offer herself up as a burned sacrifice. Some people reckoned that she was too hyped up for her own good – felt how she dare be compared to the greats: Billy Holiday and Ella!
They admitted that she may have appeared and may have sounded like she was cut from the same cloth, but Billy, Ella, Nina, and Bessie? That’s pushing it! Then again, anyone who really had a firm grasp on what it meant to live in a blues song would not imagine it far-fetched at all that she stood next to Ella on vocal competence or performance ability. When she recorded her duet with Anthony Dominick Benedetto aka Tony Bennett, that should have actually been her entrance to the industry. The poor girl never stood a chance. The minute she opened her mouth to sing while strumming her guitar at the Cobden Club, little did she know that that would cause dissonance throughout her life. She had to sing though. Otherwise, where would Tony have heard her sing? Where would Simon Fuller have heard her unique, husky and sultry voice? How would she have crossed paths with those music experts if she hadn’t sung in bars in London and so on?
Having never imagined that she’d be at all famous – in her own words, emphasis on “at all famous”, Amy thought she would probably go mad if she became famous. Almost certainly, she didn’t think that she would become famous because that is not a ‘thing’ with Jazz musicians. They make music for the soul; which is long lasting. In the exceptionally demonstrative and equally miserable biopic: Amy, 15 minutes in the singer says that she doesn’t think that she would be able to handle popularity. At one point in her young life her pianist saw her dying for music. He expressed that she loved music too much as though music were a human being. She did go mad, and sadly she did die for music. Similarly, many musicians and other artists had the exact sentiments shared by close family members and friends. They were deeply engaged and intrinsically connected with their talents to the point that after they died of drug overdoses or alcohol binging, the only reasonable explanations were that their brilliance killed them.
Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law said (after Whitney’s death): “There is so much I could say about her. A life misunderstood. Sometimes misunderstood even by herself.”
Brilliance cannot be locked in and left unearthed for very long. It forces its way out to shine. When it shines and the stars align so to speak, they really do align. I’ve always wondered however, that when they do align, do they align to brighten the artist’s path or do they shine upon the years you could have lived without all the drama had you not been a mere scoop for the media; so sought after for interviews that you burned out at the thought alone of them being scheduled? How on earth can the stars brighten a path that spells out self-ruin?
Most brilliant people reportedly live lonely lives. They live very lonely lives because they constantly have overactive imaginations filled with words, songs, images, and dreams. These words, songs, images and dreams keep playing over and over like an old record on long play.
When Whitney died, Stevie Wonder sang.
The one line that from Love’s In Need of Love Today was the highlight of the entire ceremony, with the choir singing behind Stevie’s technically accomplished voice – “America and the world, we need to put it together quickly (referring to LOVE), cause God’s gonna come and we better be ready.”
Bobby Kristina: that poor girl never stood a chance. There are some dark similarities to be drawn from the lives of the two singers. Clive Davis was Whitney’s industry father for decades. The industry father, despite being present at the same hotel at the time of her death prior to music’s biggest night could not save her. Amy felt that she had become promiscuous due to her father’s separation from their family when she was young; her father did at a later stage become more hands on in her career. He guarded Amy with his life, protected her and was with her on her tours; he made amends with his daughter. Still, he too could not save her.
The daily mail on Whitney: “To the world, Houston was the pop queen with the perfect voice, the dazzling diva with regal beauty, a troubled superstar suffering from addiction, and finally, another victim of the dark side of fame.”
