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Gary Hambleton's avatar

Yes, I agree with Andy Myatt -- Amy cannot be relegated to the 'one-hit-wonder' dustbin. She was a singular, generational talent with few peers. If you can't recognize that fact after hearing just a few phrases of her singing, then that's your deficiency and you shouldn't be casting aspersions. I would also offer that she sold millions of albums (or downloads, if we must) in the U.K. and the U.S., since that seems to be the metric by which you judge an artist's worth. Like Billie Holiday and other true talent luminaries, she was given to the usual drug/alcohol excesses and trusted the wrong people. When I told my musician friend that I had heard this new singer, Amy Winehouse, he did his own listening. He replied saying "Gary, she is 'Jaco' good!" meaning she was in the league of the very best -- a reference to Jaco Pastorius, the astonishing musical genius who completely changed the way the bass guitar is played. Check him out if you haven't heard of him. Those who were captivated and tantalized by Amy's singing know of what I am bloviating here. Her legacy is intact and doesn't need me to run to its defense, but I just couldn't let your slight go uncontested. I do, however, enjoy your many other posts, so I won't cast you into the dustbin.

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Sonny Bunch's avatar

Winehouse partisans get very mad about this label, but I don’t consider “one hit wonder” to be an aspersion or a dismissal. It’s merely a description of general audience familiarity with her works, which is why marketing a movie about her by focusing on her songs was foolish.

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