Music + Book Pairings – Edition #4

Ready for another music + book pairing? This week, we’re featuring the uber-talented wild child, Amy Winehouse.

We recommend pairing her album Back to Black with a book written by her father, Mitch, Amy, My Daughter:

On July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse’s family, friends, and fans around the world mourned the tragedy that this remarkable, talented, and extraordinarily generous young woman was now gone. A legion of dedicated fans had lost their idol; a devastated family had lost their Amy. With this difficult news came an outpouring of love and grief from her fans, along with troubling questions about Amy’s very public struggles with drugs and alcohol, as people tried to understand how such a soulful singer had been silenced so young.

Now, in this intimate and tender account, her father and confidant, Mitch, offers an inside view of Amy’s life as she lived it, putting to rest once and for all the controversies that have long surrounded her. Sifting fact from fiction, he details the events and the people that shaped her youth, sharing how she honed her distinctive sound, created her unforgettable look, and channeled her own life into hits such as “You Know I’m No Good,” “Rehab,” and “Back to Black”. Mich holds nothing back about Amy’s addiction to drugs and alcohol, mixing the painful with the poignant as he describes the realities of her dependencies and the toll they took on the family and friends who refused to give up on her. He also exposes the years of behind-the-scenes drama that consumed his life and explains how, for those who knew Amy in her last months, the greatest tragedy of all was that she died just when she finally appeared to be conquering her demons.

Amy, My Daughter is an emotional journey into music, addiction, and the unbreakable bond between a daughter and her father.

Her album Back to Black had five hit singles “Rehab”, “You Know I’m No Good”, “Back to Black”, “Tears Dry on Their Own” and “Love is a Losing Game”.

Sadly, there are not many other alternate pairing suggestions in existence – as we all know Amy’s life was cut short – so we recommend either her first studio album, Frank, or Lioness: Hidden Treasures, which was released after her death and is a collection of previously unreleased tracks, alternate versions of existing classics, as well as a couple of brand new compositions.

Fun Fact: In a 2007 interview with Rolling Stone, Amy said her childhood dream was to be a roller-skating waitress like the ones she’d seen in “American Graffiti.