Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 535
 Jazz meets Soul in the land of bliss. Her reputation is already assured. March 13, 2007
Christi Serrao (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
63 out of 66 found this review helpful
Addiction to alcohol, marijuana, sex - just about anything you can get hooked on, Amy has been there, written a song about it, and is now looking for something else to feed her dependency.
Well, it makes for an interesting record.
As a songwriter Amy has grown and stretched her self, vocally she is in a new league breaking loose with Aretha-style vocal stylings on "Just Friends" or going gospel on the opening single "Rehab".
"Love Is A Losing Game" is pure classic modern songwriting: brief, to the point and drenched in emotion. Other highlights include the Nas inspired "Me and Mr Jones", the beautiful "Wake Up Alone" and "I'm No Good" - the personal epiphany that you can behave just as badly as all those guys that have messed you around and stamped all over you..
After a strident opening with (refusing to go to) "Rehab", she works through a patchwork of vices and denials and just about every genre going in a self-dramatising sweep of trauma and Tanqueray.
Swept along in the tide of her addictions, over waves of Aretha Franklin influences, her cigarette-tinged voice croons, twists and occasionally screeches to a complement of guitars, trumpets, even the odd flugelhorn.
You name it, she's not afraid to use it.
Experimental and confident, she flirts variously with R&B, soul and hip hop before returning to her home key: JAZZ.
It doesn't get any better than this. April 28, 2007
Gina Miller (Seattle, WA USA)
51 out of 64 found this review helpful
This girl is seemingly channeling a retro soulful singer through these modern times. The combination is undeniably penetrating. The whole album is impressive. I watched Winehouse sing on Youtube with just a microphone and herself, it seems to come pouring out of her effortlessly. Winehouse sounds like no one else, yet sounds so familiar. Her voice is deep, rich and confident. She has a natural edge and fills her lyrics with unabated self confessions. I had bought her previous album (Frank) and wasn't sure if it was going to be as stylized as this one, but it was! If you saw her video on t.v. and you liked it, you won't be disappointed, there will be many more powerful songs of hers that you like. I highly recommend this album and her earlier work as well. She is an all around super talented songwriter and singer.
21st century soul classic. March 27, 2007
G.Villan (travelling around the world)
38 out of 40 found this review helpful
Listening to her voice, you continually have to carry out the aural equivalent of rubbing your eyes to remind yourself that it's not a seasoned black session singer in a jazz club- but a skinny 23-year-old Jewish girl from Camden, UK. Almost impossible to categorise, as she once boasted, endearingly: "I'm at least a five trick pony".
Any album that features the lines "What kind of f***ery is this?/ You made me miss the Slick Rick gig" demands closer investigation. Of course, 23-year-old Londoner Amy Winehouse demonstrated her aptitude for a tart couplet on her debut album three years ago, but this time the music, too, packs a similar punch, and the upshot is a 21st-century soul classic.
Starting with the pungent single "Rehab", everything is in its right place: the exuberant neo-Motown swing supplied by producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi; the rich, sinewy vocals, somewhere between Lauryn Hill, Beth Gibbons and Etta James; and the thoroughly modern songwriting, in which infidelity is betrayed by a telltale carpet burn ("You Know I'm No Good") and a lover is less desirable than a good supply of weed ("Addicted").
On the latter song she triumphantly declares: "I'm my own man."
Only a fool would argue.
THIS WHITE GIRL CAN SANG March 13, 2007
Alan Dorfman (DELRAY BEACH, FL United States)
29 out of 42 found this review helpful
Like a time machine back to the 50s and early 60s, Amy Winehouse's stunning second CD "Back To Black" takes us back to the black music of that time, soul, before Motown perfected the formula to emasculate it for mass consumption. This is the soul of Dinah Washington, Lavern Baker, Betty Everett and Bettye LaVette (to name a few), raw emotion with depth, the pain and disappointment of relationships not glossed over and the inner strength that comes from being born a woman. And she's got soul in spades, always authentic and never sounding imitative or ironic.
Any CD that starts with the line "They wanted me to go to rehab, I said "No, no no," let's you know that a strong woman is in control and Amy Winehouse has the strength of personality, clarity of vision and sheer vocal prowess to grab your ears and heart from that first line and hold it all the way through 11 brilliant songs. My personal favorites are "Wake Up Alone," "You Know I'm No Good," "Addicted," "Love Is A Losing Game" and the classic title song "Back To Black" sung by The Other Woman as her man prepares to go home once and for all.
I must take special notice of the arrangements for they are simultaneously nostalgic and thoroughly modern at the same time (are those tubular bells I hear?) and always engage while never overwhelming the singer as so much that masquerades as soul these days does. Not that Amy Winehouse could possibly be overwhelmed - her vocal chops are finely honed and totally evocative and moving.
A great CD. With Joss Stone preparing to take her soul into the 21st Century with next week's new release, we needed a new champion of real soul and I believe that Amy Winehouse will still being listened to in 50 years just as we are listening to her musical foremothers today, 50 years on.
 People really need to stop giving this album 5 star reviews. June 12, 2007
Elias Ayres (San Diego)
26 out of 69 found this review helpful
I cannot believe how low people's musical tastes have dropped over the past few years. This drivel is given over 100 5 star reviews!?!?!?! Are you serious!?!??! It isn't about how she compares with older R&B/soul divas (she doesn't) or how contrived and boring her lyrics are (Your going to rehab? congrats!!), the fact is that people like this album BECAUSE THEY WERE TOLD TO.
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