Amy Winehouse died 10 years ago (essay for Entropy)

Hard to believe, but Amy Winehouse has been gone for a decade. For me, it was almost equally unbelievable that I would become a big fan of her work.

As I explained in an essay I wrote a few years ago for the literary magazine, Entropy, I was an older mother of a toddler. Not a typical Winehouse fan!

But then at some point during the years following her death, I became obsessed with a version of her song, “Tears Dry on Their Own,” which appears on the CD, “Amy Winehouse at The BBC.” Especially while driving – driving alone, where I can listen to the CD over and over. I can turn it up. I can sit close to the steering wheel as I do when I want to pay close attention to something, staring out at the street in search of an explanation. 

And I’ve found a form of genius inside of the song. She sings about a failed love affair that ends when the man “walks away,” and “the sun goes down,” while the narrator, the jilted one, stands and watches, forced to accept this turn of events. The inflection of her voice, and the rise and fall of the notes have the same effect on me as the love affair in the song had on Winehouse, or the song’s narrator (possibly, one in the same). 

You can read the essay here:

https://entropymag.org/variations-on-a-theme-in-memoriam-amy-winehouse-years-later-my-tears-are-still-drying-on-their-own/

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