At the moment, Amy Winehouse’s story is about many things.
It’s certainly not about that collection of coincidence, the 27 Club.
(For the record, John Bonham and Keith Moon died at 32, Marc Bolan at 30, Tim Buckley 28, Gram Parsons 26, Sid Vicious 21.)
This is a story about untapped potential and bad company.
There is only so much to be said about the 27-year-old from north London. The singer from stage school signed by American Idol co-creator Simon Fuller, who only found her stride with her second album, 2006’s Back to Black.
She couldn’t record another album in the intervening period, but did record some devastatingly effective cover versions.
Back to Black was good enough to lead to the venerable Tony Bennett duetting with Winehouse and praising “her rare intuition as a vocalist”.
George Michael, two days after her death, praised it as "the best album I had heard since the seventies. No question.”
Prince begged her to join him onstage for Love Is A Losing Game during his London O2 residency. She finally relented on the last night, joining him for his after-show.
This is a story about missed opportunity. As Paul Gambaccini noted, as he catalogued her increasingly errant appearances at three Ivor Novello awards, "we've lost 20 years of great records".
For all her recent unreliablity, the question of how scintillating a live performer the five-time Grammy winner would have been had she cleaned up her act remains unanswered.
Amy Winehouse will be inextricably linked with her ex, Blake Fielder-Civil, who inspired Back to Black, the album where Mark Ronson helped Amy Winehouse find her voice.
Fielder-Civil doesn't have her rare talent, but he does have his life and a young son.
She also associated with the kids from a neighbouring estate in Camden, north London, who wanted to hang out and more with their famous neighbour.
So this is no longer about Amy Winehouse.
The unromantic truth is that, unlike those who partied with her, she no longer has a chance to change her story. We will have to remember her music, long after what ran the stories about her life has wrapped pokes of chips.
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