May 9, 2007 By Nicole Stanish 2 min read

When you first listen to Amy Winehouse, you’ll probably imagine some doe-eyed, 60’s girl group decked in bubble gum pink dresses and bouffant hairdos singing sugar sweet lyrics. Then you see Winehouse: brash, tattooed, confident and often drunk. Precocious in her lyrics at the age of 23, she transforms her life experiences into song, and belts out lyrics of infidelity and heartbreak with surprising sincerity. She takes the ache, shows her scars, and brushes herself off to reflect her strength as a woman. When you first listen to Amy Winehouse, you’ll probably imagine some doe-eyed, 60’s girl group decked in bubble gum pink dresses and bouffant hairdos singing sugar sweet lyrics. Then you see Winehouse: brash, tattooed, confident and often drunk. Precocious in her lyrics at the age of 23, she transforms her life experiences into song, and belts out lyrics of infidelity and heartbreak with surprising sincerity. She takes the ache, shows her scars, and brushes herself off to reflect her strength as a woman.

She’s taken soul, jazz and blues, and kicked the sound and lyrics up to an unexpected (and most times explicit) level. In the first track, “Rehab,” she vents, “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no!” It sets the pace and lets the listener know this is not a happy go lucky pop album. One of my favorite tracks on the album is “You Know That I’m No Good (Remix)” featuring Wu Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, the pairing is brilliant. “Me and Mr. Jones” is a proud, soulful declaration and is rumored to be about rapper Nasir “Nas” Jones. The title track, “Back to Black” is dark and beautiful, and the keystone of the album. “We only said goodbye with words/I died a hundred times/You go back to her/And I go back to black.”

Back to Black is a modern classic.

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