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?

Um, because that's not why I love Amy's music. There's lots of crap out there that sounds "different" from what's on the radio now, but it's equally unlistenable, uninvolving or uninspired. Winehouse sings like a cross between Billie Holiday, Shirley Bassey, Ronnie Spector and Dusty Springfield. Can't get much better than that. She writes like a foul-mouthed Carole King in her Brill Building heyday. Can't get any better than that either in pop. With her producer and band she's revisiting and revising the sound and stylings of the greatest era in pop and soul - roughly the late '50s thru the early '70s - putting just enough of a twist on things to make the moments surprising and delightful and new (it doesn't hurt that her songwriting is rock solid to begin with).

I think she's the exact opposite of contrived (which you asserted), as she's doing exactly what she obviously loves, working with a pop vocabulary the industry abandoned decades ago. Foolishly, as her recent commercial success proves - turns out people like listening to actual music, with actual lyrics and an actual tune and clever, musical production after all. Whoda thunk it?

I don't think she's "visionary" - she's not Bjork - but from an emotional and entertainment standpoint she makes more of a connection with her listeners than anything I've experienced in a decade. I think her personal problems are sad, but hardly unique. Many great talents have been thru as bad or worse - it seems to come with the territory. The ability of an artist like Winehouse or Holiday or Springfield to see further into the music than the rest of us also seems to allow them to see further into themselves (and others). They don't seem to much care for what they find there, and drug use is unfortunately one of the most common results.

I'm not sure why Winehouse should be vilified for it, anymore than Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. Drug abuse isn't a moral failing, it's a mental health issue. I do find it interesting that Winehouse is coming under attack from folks who apparently aren't Reaganite Puritans for her drug use. I suspect these folks are just pissed off that Winehouse is getting all the attention their tedious pet acts aren't, and are using whatever bricks are at their disposal to attack her. They can't really attack the songs, because the melodies are flawless and the lyrics are strong. They can't attack her singing, because she can sing her ass off (at least, when she's not completely wasted). So they go after her image (always a convenient way to target women performers) and her drug problem.

You clowns are more pathetic than a half-naked Winehouse stumbling thru freezing London.

"They don't seem to much care for what they find there, and drug use is unfortunately one of the most common results. I'm not sure why Winehouse should be vilified for it, anymore than Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. Drug abuse isn't a moral failing, it's a mental health issue. I do find it interesting that Winehouse is coming under attack from folks who apparently aren't Reaganite Puritans for her drug use."

I, and I think a lot of people here, aren't upset that she uses drugs, but rather that she glamorizes drug use. Those artists all abused drugs, but they either 1) didn't sing in a direct way about their use, 2) weren't popular enough during their lifetime to exert much influence over the minds of others, or 3) weren't working within a culture where drug abuse is rampant and a real problem.

Say whatever you want about her music, but she's essentially acting as the Marlboro Man for hard drug abuse. I've unfortunately had a few musician friends pass away because they wanted to so badly to be the tortured emotional musician that Elliot Smith, Spiritualized, etc. represented. For them, drug use wasn't about their own tortured longings to find "real truth" or whatever this mythical musician is supposed to be searching for. It was about being young and trying to find an identity. Unfortunately, the identity they chose was one in which drug abuse was a pre-requisite for membership, at least in their eyes.

I don't know much about Ms. Winehouse or her music, but your lead sentence caught my eye -- "We're all expecting Amy Winehouse to die." Well, everyone was expecting the same of Keith Richards forty years or so ago, too. Who expected Keith to be rockin' at 63?

"This stupid speculation about about her bona fides and motivations by someone who apparently has never met her and especially never been on a bender with her is idiotic."

"How do you know if you wuddent there? Huh? Huh?"

Doofus.

That might be the weakest fucking thing I have heard all day.

brave anonymous?

At least they weren't working as a band during that decade as James Hannaham seems to indicate: "Jones and the Dap-Kings sound like a band from the '70s in part because they lived through the '70s without changing their style, even after it became passé." Actually, during the 1970s, Jones was not involved with the Dap-Kings, who only formed in 2000. And prior to 1996, Jones hadn't even done much professional work as a singer, working instead as a prison guard on Riker's Island at one point. In fact, Dap-Kings' original members Leon Michels and Homer ‘Funkyfoot’ Steinweiss were only born in the late '70s, so Hannaham's error looks all the more foolish to someone who actually knows the band. I write all of this not to be pedantic, but rather to encourage the author and Salon to be more rigorous in their fact-checking. If you're trying to argue that Amy Winehouse isn't authentic, you might want to get your story straight.

Say whatever you want about her music, but she's essentially acting as the Marlboro Man for hard drug abuse.

Hardly. Her drug use is wrecking her career, her voice and her performances. If anything she's today's poster child for why drugs are dangerous and why drug abuse is no laughing matter.

Her songs occasionally mention her drug use, and when they do so they handle it honestly - nothing more, nothing less. "I didn't get a lot in class," Winehouse moans in "Rehab", "but I know it don't come in a shotglass." That one lyric is worth 10,000 inane "Just Say No" PSA's, and stands in sharp contrast to the product shoveled at us over Clear Channel radio stations by music moguls over the past 20 years or so (Clive Davis and "Crack is whack" Whitney, anyone?).