Today would have been Amy Winehouse’s 29th birthday.
Though I never took a strong interest in her music or her life, there’s no doubt that she was a falling star that burned through the universe too brightly and exploded into a million little stars into the great abyss (or insert whatever cliche you want to put there).
She was an anomaly, a slew of contradictions both aesthetically and musically: a Jewish girl from Britain who sang with guttural and smokey intensity, a cotton candy beehive hairdo and cat eye-wearer who enjoyed the heroin chic look of tank tops, wilted and tattooed arms and missing teeth.
She had the sound of Etta James, the look of Dusty Springfield and the self-destruction of Sid Vicious all rolled into one.
The majority of Winehouse’s pictures circulating the web are images of a sad, dirty and sickly young woman who looked much older than her age. Photoshopped photos emphasizing her cocaine-laced nostrils, her track marks or any other abnormality on her (more…)