Skipper

I think this is the first time I've posted on anything connected with pop music but I feel I want to in this case, so great is the possible tragedy hanging over Amy Winehouse. Female singers come and go normally for me these days, with very few registering on a personal radar which recognises few other than Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell and (possibly) Dusty Springfield. But I have no doubt that Amy is in that class. She has only produced one classic album, Back to Black, but it is of such surpassing excellence that even those murky people who award the Grammys have bestowed no less than five awards upon her.

She could not travel to collect her awards because of visa problems but did so via video link and even managed to sing a couple of numbers from her album. Music of her type has long attracted doomed chanteuses like Billy Holiday and a clutch of male singers too depressing to mention. Having seen pictures of her in recent months where she looks even more wasted and waif-like than above and seen those pictures of her allegedly smoking crack cocaine, I rather doubt whether the revival enabling her to sing her songs, is evidence of an imminent recovery.

She is still totally enamoured of her imprisoned drug addict husband Blake Fielder-Civil and even her precious art has emerged from the depths of an addiction she shows no real signs of overcoming, or even of wanting to overcome('They tried to make me go to rehab/ I said "No, no, No!'). I desperately hope that an artist so liberally endowed with musical gifts can fight back and overcome her problems but, to be honest, right now the chances appear to be be slight indeed.