back to black

how she will be best remembered; for her staggering live performances

A mourner carries her phothgraph at her funeral

I was deeply saddened on Saturday of the sudden death of Amy Winehouse on Saturday. While, given her history of drug and alcohol abuse her untimely passing could have been foreseen, it still came as a terrible shock. She was one of the modern legends of contemporary music and it is a sad story for the world of music that she only ever made 2 albums. Such a vulnerable character, Amy almost made her public persona a caricature with her ever growing signature beehive and her late night London jaunts, but after her disastrous gig in Serbia it seemed she was getting back on the straight and narrow. I had a real affinity with Amy after a whole host of strangers and acquaintances telling me they thought I looked similar to her. I discovered her first album Frank and became a fan, then when I heard a snippet of Rehab while at uni on daytime telly before it's release I could not get enough and in 2006 swiftly booked tickets with my flatmate to see her in 2006 at our student union just before the release of her seminal classic album Back to Back. I was hooked! Not only to her soulful voice but to her insightful, witty and wonderfully wise lyrics. As much as she is a great singer she is an incredibly talented song-writer, and her songs oozed a brutal honesty that hasn't been seen since the country or soul records of yesteryear.

Always such a troubled character and a lost-soul it seems fitting that Amy Winehouse lived fast and died young joining a whole host of musical greats in the Forever 27 Club. Up in rock'n'roll heaven with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain I hope her soul finds peace.

an infamous resident of Camden Square NW1 - her street was awash with fans

fans left tributes to her hard partying ways and her favourite spirits and cigarettes