Free Amy Winehouse by Chas Newkey-Burden

never heard the album from start to finish. I don’t have it in my house. The marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible. Everything was a shambles. It’s frustrating, because you work with so many idiots – but they’re nice idiots. So you can’t be, like, “You’re an idiot.” They know that they’re idiots.’ So disillusioned was she that she wasn’t to write another song for eighteen months.
    So, not the most enthusiastic words about the album from Amy herself. However, the response from the critics was far, far more complimentary. The BBC website said that the album was ‘Lyrically fresh and uncompromising’. It added, ‘This is Amy’s first release and augurs well for her future. If this is what the young lady is capable of at such an early stage it must be pretty certain that this will be the first in a long line of well crafted, funky & feisty releases.’ In the Guardian , Beccy Lindon wrote, ‘Sitting somewhere between Nina Simone and Erykah Badu, Winehouse’s sound is at once innocent and sleazy… It’s hard not to hear the honesty and soul that resonates throughout this album.’
    In The Times , Paul Connolly concluded that,
    Her Frank could not be more aptly titled, with its dissection of romantic farragos, sexual betrayal and jealousy, peppered with caustic put-downs and killer one-liners . ‘F*** Me Pumps’, a withering attack on women of a certain age who hit the town in search of a rich husband but end up with a string of one-night stands, is beyond acerbic. Its cutting lyrics – ‘Like the news, every day youget pressed’ – are only marginally softened by a skinny tune that vaguely resembles ‘Winter Wonderland’.
    The Evening Standard profiled Amy to tie in with the release and said,
    That debut album, Frank (as in both her hero, Sinatra, and her disarming manner), is a remarkably assured cornucopia – part jazz, part hip-hop, but reminiscent of Norah Jones, Dinah Washington and, mostly, American soul diva Erykah Badu. It’s accessible enough for Radio 2 to feature heavily; commercial enough for her to be signed by an offshoot of super-manager Simon Fuller’s operation and sufficiently cutting-edge to have been granted nods of approval from magazines such as Straight No Chaser and Blues Soul.
    The hip magazine Dazed And Confused said it was one of ‘the most impressive British debuts in years’; MOJO gave it four out of five and described it as a ‘stunning debut’. Elsewhere it was described as Nelly Furtardo meeting Billie Holiday.
    The feminist writer Holly Combe says of the album’s artwork,
    The image is of someone who likes all the apparent fripperies of Being-a-Girl but who knows how to keep up with The Lads too. In other words, we’re talking about the perfectly balanced image. Just like the much sought after‘mostly B’s’ archetype in those quizzes in Cosmo and Just Seventeen . Nice one Amy!
    The Leicester Mercury was less approving, saying, ‘In fact it’s intense, maybe a little too much so. Although this is the album that may make her name, it’s not the one to carve it into the Hall of Fame. But time and a blossoming vocal talent are on her side.’ It seems that other local press in the Midlands was not enthusiastic, either. The Birmingham Evening Mail said, ‘Her Macy Gray-style voice is an acquired taste, however.’ The Metacritic website – which collates all reviews of albums and gives them an ‘overall rating’ – gave Frank 84/100.
    The album entered the UK charts at Number 60 but had climbed to its peak position of Number 13 by January 2004. It was to re-enter the charts when Amy’s profile was raised by the release of her following album, Back to Black . It made Number 28 in the Irish charts. As good as disowned by Amy and a slow-burner initially in the charts due to a lack of radio play, Frank nonetheless remains a classic album and one that swept Amy to the attention of the music industry.
    It also earned Amy her first serious