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How people can't distinguish musical talent from artistic creativity or merit. Winehouse is talented. She is not artistically creative. Her musical stylings are every bit as contrived and unimaginately as the "boy bands" or whomever else the letter writers are referring to as "pop radio". She can hold a note, and provide some fairly good renditions of original songs in a well-defined genre. Her work is only "original" in the sense that the genre of which they are a part is rarely engaged by contemporary performers. Why don't you all just admit that you like her because she sounds different than what is on the radio now, and you like to be different? There is no shame in that, and avoids this whole "tortured, fallen visionary artist" pastiche which is as old fashioned and frankly offensive as the mythologies embraced by right-wing, conservative America.
