Grown Up Gossip & Internet Villainy
When Amy Winehouse died, everyone was pretty saddened by the news. A young woman, not yet in her thirties, lost and still with a lot more to give. Shame. Of course, it was a fertile period for making lazy jokes about it on twitter, but the less said about that, the better.
Anyway, Pulp honcho Jarvis Cocker has something to say about it all.
Basically, the national treasure in the making has blamed the tabloids for Amy Winehouse’s untimely death.
Amy Winehouse hasn’t been dead a month and already, we’re painted into a corner, forced to make light of it all. We kinda wanted to be respectful for a little longer but alas, the world works in such a way that we’re now required to mercilessly tear her death a new one.
See, despite the fact she’s barely cold, there’s plans to turn her into a television show already. Imagine that! A touching portrait of a troubled and talented young woman, broken up with commercials for WKD and toilet roll.
Of course, the family are bang into the idea of making some money on all this ‘famous cadaver’ thing.
Green Day are one of those grotty bands that people love hating. They’re derivative as hell and sell out huge jumbodomes, grinding the gears of everyone who likes supposedly more adventurous bands.
Of course, this is hilarious to your average Green Day devotee. While you mew about innovation and Liking The Real Thing From ’76, they’ve been to a dozen shows, got drunk, danced around and generally had a dumb gas. Who is the loser here, really? And that makes them more irritating, right?
And even though Green Day tend to apply maximum volume to everything, over the years they’ve occasionally shown a softer side (Waa! Boo! Hiss!), which they’ve revealed again with a new tribute song for Amy Winehouse, which you can hear over the jump if you’ve got nothing better to do.
You’d have to have a heart of coal to not care a jot about the passing of Amy Winehouse. That, or you’re indulging in an exercise in nose-pulling by saying cruel things for the sake of it, just to wind everyone up.
What kind of scumbag would do that sort of thing, eh?
Still, while we all scurry around the floor crying and braying, Blake Fielder-Civil is taking a little from column A and a little from column B as he’s more than prepared to show how inconsolably hurt he is by all this, mixed with a need to rinse Winehouse’s cadaver for a few quid. He’s approaching the world of Paul Burrell, the arena of the overwrought vulture.
When any popstar dies, it isn’t unusual for record companies to rush release some previously unheard tracks, and that is exactly what is happening with the late Amy Winehouse who could see at least a dozen unheard tracks hitting the shelves.
A spokesman for her label says that Winehouse had put down the “framework” of around a “dozen” new songs.
But will they be up to scratch compared to Back To Black, the LP that Winehouse always wanted to make and, perhaps, surpassed even her own expectations? We’ve seen with posthumous Michael Jackson releases that, without the artist’s input, these releases can leave the listener wanting. Badly.
Amy Winehouse’s death was felt sincerely by many, including her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. He’s riddled with anguish, invariably soundtracked by a chorus of boos from those who need someone to blame for Winehouse’s troubles.
However, Blake believes he could have saved Amy.
Get ready to launch your rotten tomatoes and insults because, we’re imagining you’ve already made your mind up about the whole situation haven’t you?
More Amy Winehouse news, and this time, something rather sweet in the face of the story’s obvious misery. This afternoon, Winehouse was cremated as music execs, band mates and friends and family got together to send the singer off at a synagogue in North London.
Her funeral was refreshingly small by celebrity standards, attended by around 150 people, which included Kelly Osbourne and Mark Ronson.
It has been reported that the service was understandably emotion, but also, rather funny in places and ending in something of a singsong.
‘The 27 Club’ is one of the most depressing things in popular culture. That’s because its a construct of regrettably long-living music pundits, trying to put a glamorous slant on the needless, untimely death of a young person.
And so, Amy Winehouse has now ‘joined’ Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin in the number of people who have died aged 27. Looks like a cool, druggy, too-fast-to-live list, eh?
Well, no-one ever mentions other musicians that died at 27, like Linda Jones, the soul singer who died of diabetes or Helmut K?llen who died of incredibly boring carbon monoxide poisoning. No. It’s all pointless glamour which encourages lonely, successful people to destroy themselves for the sake of beatifying rock and pop. And it seems that Winehouse fell for it like many before her.
When a young talented person dies, it always makes for the most arresting, gruesome spectacle. Away from the obvious sorrow of someone being taken too young, there’s a myriad of sideshows which compel like car-crashes.
What is most fascinating about the death of a young person is the reaction from those that didn’t know her at all. The response to the capsizing of a troubled mind is met with both over egged misery, needless anger, bad jokes and genuine sympathy.
And this weekend, when Amy Winehouse passed away, the gamut of emotions ran wildly, careering into each other in some kind of awkward grief Olympics.
Remember when Amy Winehouse was a singer who everyone either liked, or kinda liked? Then, she hit the sauce with the kind of vigour not seen since Keith Moon’s liver ran out on him. Alas, ever since the gargantuan success of ‘Back To Black’, she’s done sod-all apart from puke and stagger.
Of course, this foray into a very public self-harming left the door open for everyone else to have her career for her, with Plan B, Adele, Duffy and Paloma Faith all picking up her cheques for her, leaving her to bumble around with her new breasts and consistently live on the potential of what could’ve been, as opposed to actually being brave enough to get new tunes out.
And so, tottering back into the limelight after much news of ‘she’s actually doing rather well these days’, she found herself in Belgrade before a booing crowd who instantly tired of her trainwreck behaviour.
