Back To Black

Album: Back to Black

Artist: Amy Winehouse

Released: October 27th, 2006

Highlights: Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Back To Black, Tears Dry On Their Own

“Frank” was, before everything else, an album rooted in jazz. Its eventual nods towards other rhythms, such as when Amy Winehouse’s backing band tackled soul grooves, toyed around with bossa nova acoustic guitars, and dabbled in hip-hop and R&B beats, were detours that added some flavor to the music. “Back to Black” does not completely abandon jazz: the looseness of the playing, with occasional turns towards sober improvisation, and the horns are still here. However, as if “Frank” was an unpretentious display of Winehouse’s vocal prowess and musical taste and “Back to Black” was intended to break her into the market in a big explosive way, the latter chooses to take the jazz inclinations of the former and present them with the twists of modern rhythm and blues, a genre that is no stranger to dominating contemporary music charts.

Stylistic shifts aside, “Back to Black” comes as a more focused and better-written work than “Frank”, which should come as a resounding statement to anyone who sat down and listened to Winehouse’s fantastic debut. “Frank” was sprawling and relaxed; “Back to Black” is tight and delivers numerous punches, even if it still often swings and sways like its predecessor. Those differences are quickly announced by “Rehab”, the opening track about the singer’s relationship troubles and how they led her to alcohol addiction, which mixes soul and R&B to create a modern classic with a remarkable chorus that is written to stay in the listener’s head and verses that are carried by a thumping bass and horns, producing a groove that is absolutely irresistible.

Although her well-documented vices are not often revisited during the rest of the album, her turbulent love life is essentially omnipresent, which – given how “Rehab” spends its time building an unbreakable link between those two themes – makes both of those elements the gravitational center of a work that is absolutely personal. “Back to Black”, possibly the record’s best song, depicts – on top of a dark soundscape that has hints of pop music from the 50s – how Amy was abandoned by her then-boyfriend, who left her for somebody else; “Tears Dry on Their Own”, a stellar soul track, touches on that very same situation, but presents it through sunnier, more mature and optimistic lenses; and “You Know I’m No Good” talks about an inconsistent relationship that alternates intimacy with hurtful distance and indifference.

“Back to Black” ends up being, like numerous other classics that have come out across the years, a musical example of Newton’s famous quote, in which the scientist claimed “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. Amy climbs onto the backs of her idols – Marvin Gaye, The Ronettes, Ella Fitzgerald, and many past black music stars – and, instead of lazily sitting up there, she uses those influences to reach higher grounds. “Back to Black” plays like an old-school R&B album that pays homage to those invaluable artists but it also presents itself as a work that knows how to grab those elements and take them somewhere else, whether it is via its lush production – which features strings and other rich arrangements – or through Amy’s voice and lyrics. It is, by all means, a modern-day classic.