With love and squalor
I was on my way back from the beach. My friend Paul wanted directions and I was only half paying attention as I pissed about on Twitter. "Amy was a legend"- eh? “Amy you will be missed”. “RIP Amy”.
I cried. Remembering that moment makes me cry.
When I got together with the boy who broke my heart all I could listen to was Amy and The Pixies. Maybe I cursed the affair with sympathetic magic. No-one did heartbreak like Amy. He'd leave early in the morning and I'd walk to work listening to Wake Up Alone, my bones aching as if made from eggshells, happy because I was in love and sad from a spooky feeling that the whole thing was doomed.
And then, when the sorry thing finished itself I listened to In My Bed on a loop. The logical conclusion to love gone wrong. The only song that nails post break up sex. When she sings " Wish I could say it breaks my heart, like you did in the beginning" she sounds tough, not fragile. Sometimes she sounded delicate, but never in a little girl way, but always haunting, worn out, a woman who had lived.
When I got my first tattoo, it was Amy I was thinking about. She made me want to be a circus freak, a sailor girl, someone with spirit. I know a tatt is not a signifier of cool - Sam Cam has a bloody dolphin - but she wore hers with reckless, gorgeous grace. So many people leave marks on you that marking yourself is deeply satisfying. And when you have unhappy moments, it does you good to remind yourself where your own bones are.
It sounds stupid, but Amy sang about her thoughts and feelings and experiences so vividly she felt like a mate. She probably wouldn’t have thought we had anything in common. I’ve lived briefly in North London, but was never part of any kind of scene there. I’ve been on nights out that got out of hand and I’ve found that alcohol can block out pain and make happy times happier. She was dealing with addiction - I can't compare my experiences there with hers. But I have been in love with someone who didn't love me back. And Amy's music is at its most eloquent when it's about unrequited love. I try to wheedle stories out of tween pop stars sometimes, saying "so many singers talk about romance, but you know they're not feeling the song. With you, you can tell it's real. What are you connecting with as you sing?" Usually if they're singing about anything honest it's about snogging a Jonas brother and thinking about Justin Bieber. But Amy is the real bleak, black, beautiful deal. Back to Black is astonishing piece of music. The control of "and my tears dry, get on without my guy" and the soaring, keening "I died a hundred times" happen barely a minute apart in the same song. It’s unbearably honest – the second to second swing between wearing a façade and shattering it yourself because you just don’t care any more.
For all her brokenness, even though I knew she was constantly dealing with something frightening, she stayed inspiring. I loved her cartoonish beauty and the griminess and openness of her sexuality. She looked strong and brittle at the same time, a pin up girl gone wrong, and even though she was all hair and boobs she didn’t seem to care about making people think she was hot. . And the voice. The throwaway scatting at the beginning of ‘Stronger than me’. The buttery warmth of “There is no greater love.” Describing it as ‘soulful’ seems far too ephemeral. All I can do is compare her to other voices I love and say that to me she was wittier than Nina, deeper than Ella, warmer than Billie.
There aren't many women that just say 'fuck it' to all the gloss and styling and media training they're offered. It's boring, but as a woman there are so many variations on 'this is how you should be' and every time we fall over drunk or get a stain on our clothes, we feel that we've failed. But I connected with her scruffiness straight away. When Amy was photographed in her blood stained ballet pumps I felt desperately worried for her, but I loved her for not wearing heels.
I never saw her perform. I wasn't cool enough to catch the first wave, at her zenith, I never managed to come by tickets and then, later, I decided I'd wait until she was 'better'. I didn't want to be part of that crowd who paid to watch her stumble and mumble, cackled and demanded their money back. Sometimes I had silly daydreams about setting up some sort of short term rehab for her (I also planned to invite Britney Spears). I wanted her to come and stay for a long weekend. I'd feed her up on vegetable risotto and really buttery toast, wrap her in blankets, put her on the sofa and make her watch Clueless and Empire Records. I'd run her a hot bath with my nicest Molton Brown bubbles and chat to her from the loo seat while she was in the tub, and talk about boys. How boys can be so much more fragile than girls, how the wrong boys would rather slowly destroy you than nurture the gifts you have and how important it is to find people who nourish and love you.
I don't think it would have done any good. I'm still sad I never met her, and so happy I discovered her music.
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