The self-destructive tortured-artist routine was bullshit when Kurt Cobain did it, it was bullshit when Elliott Smith did it, and it's bullshit now. As anyone who's seen the video of Amy Winehouse desperately finger-fumbling her way through "Back to Black" at the MTV Europe Video Music Awards knows, her look-how-messed-I-am public persona is now screwing up her art something fierce. So instead of a new record, Americans are now getting a modified version of Frank, her first album, originally released four years ago and subsequently dissed by the artist herself. Its two weakest links, "Know You Now" and a pointless cover of standard "Moody's Mood for Love", have been yanked out of the original running order and appended as hidden penalty tracks.
Winehouse has a hell of a voice, even when she imitates her favorite jazz vocalists-- especially Billie Holiday-- much too closely. (Just in case anybody misses the idea that she's supposed to be a jazz singer who's somehow stumbled into a neo-soul record, Frank begins with a little fragment of Winehouse scat-singing, and the chorus of "October Song" doesn't just namedrop Sarah Vaughan but lifts its melody from "Lullaby of Birdland".) None of her songs here are as indelible as "Rehab" or as cutting as "You Know I'm No Good"-- and the best are co-written with Nas and Fugees collaborator Salaam Remi-- but you can hear the development of the high-powered songwriter she turned into on Back to Black in the snarky character sketch "F*** Me Pumps" and in the way the sharp-nailed ballad "You Sent Me Flying" breaks into a Soul II Soul beat halfway through. And although she hasn't quite nailed the 1972 vibe of her later record (despite some corny vintage-vinyl sound effects), a couple of her stylistic experiments pay off, especially the high-drama soul loop that underpins "In My Bed".
But Winehouse's slow public wreck isn't just an unfortunate thing that's happening to someone who happens to be a star, it's part of her act, and has been from the get-go-- which means it makes her audience complicit in it. Her favorite lyrical topic, even on her debut, is loving not wisely but too well; on "Amy Amy Amy", she's gently wagging a finger at herself about her fondness for bad-news boys. And her deliberate affectation of Holiday's unmistakable vocal tics can't help but suggest the narrative we're supposed to buy into: "Great singer, tragically destroyed by her unhappy private life and bad habits, who turned her pain into universal art." (What are we as her audience supposed to do? Stage an intervention? Well, we can at least think very carefully about what our participation in that narrative means. And who are we to say we wish she'd stop going on about how she doesn't need any help and get some goddamn help already? Not vultures, that's who.) Winehouse is good enough that she was worth paying attention to for her music alone before her drama started ruining it, but in the light of her subsequent career, Frank comes off as the first chapter in the Romantic myth of the poet who feels too deeply and ends up killing herself for her audience's entertainment. And that is some bullshit.
