Amy Winehouse

Amy live on Irish Television station RTE.

Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, has been found dead at her home in Camden Square, North London. A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed that a 27-year-old woman had died in Camden and that the cause of death was as yet unexplained. Winehouse had won widespread acclaim, aged 20, with her 2003 debut album, Frank. But it was 2006's Back to Black which brought her worldwide stardom, winning five Grammy Awards.



The troubled singer made her last public appearance on Wednesday night when she joined her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield on stage at The Roundhouse in Camden. The singer danced with Bromfield and encouraged the audience to buy her album in the impromptu appearance before leaving the stage. The troubled singer had a long battle with drink and drugs which overshadowed her recent musical career. She pulled out of a comeback tour last month.


This is Amy last Wednesday (20.07.11) @ iTunes Festival 2011 at the Roundhouse in Camden. Dionne Bromfield's performance of Mama Said with Amy Winehouse (her godmother) making a guest appearance.

It is so sad about that Amy Winehouse is dead at 27. I bumped into her when visiting in the London Clinic, Harley Street, December a year ago and she looked so much better as if she was really on the mend. Her drug use had given her chronic emphysema, a lung disease more commonly associated with people who are 40 +. as a result she used to go into the clinic about 4 times a year for treatment.



There is nothing good to say about emphysema, it is serious illness and just does not get better, in fact the opposite is the case. Others have made this point but that night it struck me how small and waif like she was. No doubt she had her demons and the compulsive behaviour which led her into addiction to drink & drugs has been well documented elsewhere as she has been relentlessly pursued by a wolverine and amoral Tabloid industry looking for the latest Winehouse "money shot."

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/11/paparazzi-insight.html

However the girl I exchanged a hesitant greeting with in the cloistered sanctuary of a London hospital that night was a frail, damaged, perceptive and hugely gifted individual whose music and not her lifestyle will be her real and enduring legacy. A great pity too that it is only that for she had much more to give and would have used the years ahead to change and grow. She used to be "hidden" in a corner room on the top floor with her security outside the door, even in these protected surroundings there was no question of a "normal life."


Fan's tributes outside Amy's Camden Square home where she died

Whilst we both exchanged a nervous "hi" the nurses on duty told me she always came down to them when visitors were gone and patients were asleep for a good old natter. She was there again when I was visiting in the Clinic some six months latter. Close up she came across as frail and I wouldn't have compromised her privacy but mention it now to emphasise that whatever the reason she died, Amy's underlying health was poor. As always we should remember addiction is a disease, not a choice. She was a great talent whose resonant songs sprung from the trials of her existence and this is a terrible waste of a talented young life.

Shalom aleikhem, שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם

Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011)