Monday, December 03, 2007
The countdown continues
I put the Top 10 countdown on hold for a few days to spend a long weekend in Athens, catching some winter sunshine. My last visit was as an 11-year-old and I don't remember much except being blinded by reflection off the marble steps of the Acropolis, and the roaring traffic. This time I had sunglasses and pedestrianization has largely removed traffic woes from around Athens' principal sights.
So back to the countdown, and at Number Five is Amy Winehouse - with her two studio albums so far, Back To Black and Frank.
Amy is, for me, proof that it's actually possible to ignore the latest happenings on the "famous for 15 MB" front. Just move to a foreign country, stop really listening to pop music radio and ignore the Red Top tabloids (except when in England, when I devour them ? reading them online just isn'?t the same). Occasionally, the stray piece of news filters through, usually when one of the Tier A megastars does something truly stupid (Britney's flash, Paris' spell in the slammer) but it's otherwise quite possible to exist in an area of isolation and not keep up with the latest about "troubled singers" like Amy Winehouse.
But by the fall of 2007, enough had filtered through about Winehouse that I decided to actually find out what the fuss was all about. And, like, DOH, duuuude! What had I missed! A veritable feast: a first-class performer, in every sense of the word. Not too late to play catch up as Amy's only produced a couple of studio albums so far - and she?s still alive and Living Large. NB: I?ve also heard OF the "tragic" Pete Doherty although I've never consciously heard a note of his music (which from most accounts is a wise move).
Discovering Amy's albums Frank and Back To Black was a revelation. I'd heard the single Rehab, of course, but never listened closely enough to find out the performer's name. Once discovered, the Winehouse albums were on alternate back-to-back play. Listening to these albums also brought about a revelation: I?d totally misunderstood the phrase "fuck me pumps". Bowie references them in We Are The Dead, a track on Diamond Dogs, which I discovered at the tender age of 12 - about the same time I learned the American English word for trainers was "pumps". From that info alone, I'd somehow worked out that FMPs were something like a Converse All-Star shoe. But I digress.
Back to Amy Winehouse. Nice tunes, great voice, that's pretty much it. I'm not yet emotionally attached. Perhaps when I rediscover the albums in 20 years' time they'll bring back memories of 2007, golden days when Winehouse and Doherty were still alive.
So back to the countdown, and at Number Five is Amy Winehouse - with her two studio albums so far, Back To Black and Frank.
Amy is, for me, proof that it's actually possible to ignore the latest happenings on the "famous for 15 MB" front. Just move to a foreign country, stop really listening to pop music radio and ignore the Red Top tabloids (except when in England, when I devour them ? reading them online just isn'?t the same). Occasionally, the stray piece of news filters through, usually when one of the Tier A megastars does something truly stupid (Britney's flash, Paris' spell in the slammer) but it's otherwise quite possible to exist in an area of isolation and not keep up with the latest about "troubled singers" like Amy Winehouse.
But by the fall of 2007, enough had filtered through about Winehouse that I decided to actually find out what the fuss was all about. And, like, DOH, duuuude! What had I missed! A veritable feast: a first-class performer, in every sense of the word. Not too late to play catch up as Amy's only produced a couple of studio albums so far - and she?s still alive and Living Large. NB: I?ve also heard OF the "tragic" Pete Doherty although I've never consciously heard a note of his music (which from most accounts is a wise move).
Discovering Amy's albums Frank and Back To Black was a revelation. I'd heard the single Rehab, of course, but never listened closely enough to find out the performer's name. Once discovered, the Winehouse albums were on alternate back-to-back play. Listening to these albums also brought about a revelation: I?d totally misunderstood the phrase "fuck me pumps". Bowie references them in We Are The Dead, a track on Diamond Dogs, which I discovered at the tender age of 12 - about the same time I learned the American English word for trainers was "pumps". From that info alone, I'd somehow worked out that FMPs were something like a Converse All-Star shoe. But I digress.
Back to Amy Winehouse. Nice tunes, great voice, that's pretty much it. I'm not yet emotionally attached. Perhaps when I rediscover the albums in 20 years' time they'll bring back memories of 2007, golden days when Winehouse and Doherty were still alive.
# posted by Nesjo : 12:48
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]