amy winehouse - C or D? [RIP 7/23/11]

duh dum ch

I had the same thought this afternoon, shiples!

it's honestly saying "I would like to laugh at this joke, but i don't want to risk social alienation, so I'll temper it with mock outrage." It's the same way everyone was super "concerned" and "upset" about deathdrone because no one wanted to admit its just titillating to watch a psychopath wreak havoc on the internet.

not that it's worth getting into an argument about, but this is bullshit & you're wrong, and you should sorta separate your own issues out before you make sweeping claims

God fucking damn it :(

(Also have to avoid forums in general now so I don't see the asshole commenters trying to be cool and cruel.)

I had the same thought this afternoon, shiples!

― jay r?tard (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, 23 July 2011 21:02 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

great minds...

now fuck off you cunts

god fucking damn it

fwiw i was only shitting up the thread in the short term in hopes of it being shitted up less in the long term but yeah i've made my point and will shut up

imo when someone repeatedly fucks up, it's usually because of a personal failure

when a person who is known to fuck up regularly ends up dying young like this, it's a failure of society in some way

trying to raise the level of discourse in some marginal way, probably not succeeding:
http://bloodletters.tumblr.com/post/7980466909/you-oughta-know

fwiw i was only shitting up the thread in the short term in hopes of it being shitted up less in the long term but yeah i've made my point and will shut up

― drowning cool (some dude), Saturday, July 23, 2011 4:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

me too

xxpost @ Josh in Chicago: If they're session pros then they're usually there to make that $$ with a smile on their face/looks of intense engagement with the music even if they couldn't really give a f*ck. And if they're really good at what they do then you shouldn't be able to tell they're hating their life as they play for you. (disclaimer: i've personally known/worked with some of these folks.)

― Vendo Caramelos A Veces Sin Dinero (Capitaine Jay Vee), Saturday, July 23, 2011 2:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Seconded. I've met session players who loved playing, utterly regardless of what that entailed. I've also met session players who hated every single second of the music they were hired to play. In both cases, from all outward appearances, these players were a) nailing it and b) enjoying themselves.

Oddly enough yesterday I was reminded of Aaliyah's 10th anniversary of her death and that BET were going to do some tribute. I was going through a website called Metafilter and saw a thread talking about her recent death. I couldn't believe all the trollish/smart ass comments about how she was nothing special or mourning a celebrity is stupid and is part of a person being indoctrinated to the brainwash of mainstream society. That really irked as I could remember actually crying listening to "It's Whatever" on headphones and crying hysterically.

At the end of the fucking day, when a fan connects to a person's music (whether they sing, sing/write, or whatever) you feel you know them to a limited extent. In the case of Amy, she was a super talented woman who I hoped would set her life straight and I feel genuinely sad for her passing. Every time I listened to Back to Black, the level of sadness permeating on that album was so deafening that I wonder if she could get control of her addictions. I also feel very angry how the media (and gawkers) would sort of bait her throughout the entire thing. I know it was her responsibility to stop drugs, but I can't help but feel like us pointing at her and calling her names didn't contribute to her downfall.

I know some of you are going to be like oh you are being humorless and super serious as usual, but I'm lucky my heart hasn't turned to stone when an artist I was a fan of dies. I guess I care too much. *shrugs*

in my experience there are a handful of dicks on Metafilter but the community as a whole is a lot kinder than that!

yeah...also the average celebrity is rarely more famous or talked about than on the day of their death, so a lot of people who have never heard of them or had any particular interest in them before are suddenly surrounded by chatter and want to join the conversation or at least react to it and say they don't understand what all the fuss is about

Yeah when it comes to the political/scientific type subjects Metafilter is great when people are being objective. However, when it comes to some social subjects/entertainment the assholes seem more apparent to me.

Notably, there's a thread on Amy Winehouse over there right now, and this is the most-favorited comment

man that site's been around forever

yeah...also the average celebrity is rarely more famous or talked about than on the day of their death, so a lot of people who have never heard of them or had any particular interest in them before are suddenly surrounded by chatter and want to join the conversation or at least react to it and say they don't understand what all the fuss is about

Guess I'm different because if it is a celebrity I don't know then I don't comment at all. Why talk about something you have no business talking about it in the first place.

prob coulda made it big if they had changed the color scheme

Also, I found that Metafilter doesn't see contemporary r&b/hip hop as a "legit" genre of music. Amy Winehouse may have get more love because she is "authentic."

uh, there are a lot of people there who do! You're kind of painting the site with a wide brush, although I'd agree there's a vocal minority that's overly bitchy about some contemporary music.

Thank you for all the video posts.. "I Heard Love Is Blind" is striking me as a particularly sad video. I didn't realize she was good-looking at one point, or that she was so talented.. kinda sad.

What year was that video? Just curious..

uh, there are a lot of people there who do! You're kind of painting the site with a wide brush

Uh, I don't think so. I rarely see anyone on there defending contemporary music that much. Maybe a few people here and there will give a good defense but it's mostly popjustice like snark but said with a bigger vocabulary and more sophisticated sarcasm. I like Metafilter as a community, but like all websites it has its cons.

Anyway, I'll stop. This should be about Amy Winehouse after all.

i know jokes are in bad taste but how is pete doherty still alive and amy not? rockism even in death.

ok more seriously, what a fucking tragic waste. like someone said upthread why wasnt there anyone looking out for her in this regard? or were they all cynical bastards out to ride the gravy train all the way to the grave. obv i know its never easy to stop an addict or someone trying to more or less kill themselves over a protracted period from doing exactly that but i really hope someone at least tried.

im just sort of shocked that this is what has happened. never expected her to die.

i think it's pretty dumb to assume that there weren't people around her trying to help her get better -- they were clearly overmatched by various other forces, but still

xp I think that take on Love is Blind is from 2004? Shortly after her first album was released. The extreme weight loss and beehive happened while Back to Black was being put together, iirc.

what do people mean when they say a tragic death is a "waste"?

that she wasted her talent?

I mean, I'm not sure if I agree with all the implications, but I think that they mean that her death (especially for reasons that they perhaps see as avoidable or within her control - again, don't necessariy agree with this) was a waste of her talent and/or future potential.

she should have made plenty more albums

same as lauryn hill really (who was one of her idols) who seems to be wasting her talent in a diff way (ok having babies isnt exactly wasting her life, but she is still wasting her talent)

she's not yours

worst internet post i've seen so far: "WHY AMY WINEHOUSE AND NOT LINDSAY LOHAN?!?! WHY??? WHY???"

Her manager Ray is a very popular and well-known guy in London, a genuinely nice man who was probably not equal to the challenge of looking after someone so troubled. As he is not a music industry leech, I'm sure he is absolutely heartbroken. OTOH, I can't think of anyone who would have been able to help her WRT her addictions.

When she was arrested a couple of years ago, she was taken to the police station 100m from my flat and it was besieged by hundreds of young female tabloid reporters who spent nearly 24 hours catcalling anyone who emerged from the station; it was really provocative, vituperative stuff and if they'd been student demonstrators or whatever acting like that, I am sure cops would have made some arrests. I have never seen so many nasty little cows converged in one spot in my life and I wanted to just line them up and start smacking them.

Anyway, RIP Amy.

...

Goodbye Amy - thank you for your music, we'll miss your great voice.

Hey drugs, you suck.

so who thinks she was really that tortured or if she was into some sort of tragic elegantly wasted thing that just got out of control? cos idk what happened to her but the way she came across when i saw her when the first - always underrated- album came out compared to when the 2nd one was released, it was like 2 diff people.

i don't know, some of the lyrics on Back to Black seemed to suggest she was hurting on a very fundamental level. I mean, these weren't merely simple "breakup" songs, these were songs questioning the foundations of love, or complete shutdown. Like the title track, while catchy as hell, is really bleak lyrically....

what do people mean when they say a tragic death is a "waste"?

― the table is the do the standing still (get bent), Saturday, July 23, 2011 5:05 PM Bookmark

I don't know what other people mean, as it is a phrase that is often applied differently, but when I said it earlier today, I meant that basically she died without reaching her full potential, either as a musician or a human being. Not meaning it in a derogatory or accusative light, just factual...that if things were different, that she may have had a lot still to contribute that she won't get to now.

xp, as i understand it, she had problems with stress, depression and nerves that were magnified enormously by being in the public spotlight. She used alcohol and drugs as something to enable her to get over that enough to get up on stage, as well as deal with all the chaos away from it. A lot of her social relationships made that harder.

I saw the headline earlier but didn't see the whole thing, and didn't realize until now. Sad. What a waste (meaning, roughly: it's easy to imagine a life for her in which she would have worked out the problems that drove her to this, and made something more of her gifts).

wow @ some of you

People asking "why weren't there people in place keeping her from killing herself" don't know a lot about addicts. No one but the addict can stop an addict from using. Rehab / AA only works if you want to get clean. That's why rehab and AA have such dismal success rates, barely 1 in 10, and also why tons of people get sober without either.

There's a reason it's called "addiction". It's not like eating too much candy corn before dinner.

it's like when Michael Jackson died, he had a doctor that tried to stop him from killing himself and giving him access to painkillers, so MJ just said "ok, well then who WILL help me get these things"? Even with maximum efforts, if the addict is doing whatever they can to procure their substances, it's extremely difficult to combat it.

I suffer from eating too much candy corn addiction, you insensitive bastard.

:(

I like using candy corn to pretend I have "fangs."

Its funny when mj died I remember ilx being a lot less respectful abt it

amy winehouse never molested kids iirc