Amy Winehouse, Fleece, Bristol <!-- none onestar twostar fourstar fivestar -->
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Your support makes all the difference.It's not enough to be a pop star nowadays - you have to be a victim, too. Amy Winehouse, the 22-year-old Jewish Londoner with the smoky voice of a mature African-American jazz singer, has gone from being a curvy teen to, reportedly, an emaciated fitness addict.
But Winehouse looks well - she is no poor-me celeb locked into her own warped reality. "Try to make me go to rehab/I say no, no, no," she sings on her new single, "Rehab", out next month.
It's been nearly three years since Winehouse's debut album, Frank. She was nominated for a Brit and the Mercury, and became a platinum-seller alongside rising stars such as Norah Jones, Katie Melua and Joss Stone.
Winehouse is streets ahead in the keeping-it-real stakes. She has won an Ivor Novello award for her witty lyrics, which deal with the everyday life of a feisty young madam. "I'm not a nice girl," she tells us tonight.
Her new material casts off the jazz eiderdown and delves into the sounds of Sixties girl-groups and Stax soul. Winehouse still has her trademark low-moaning timbre, but it is swept along on a contagious wave of Motown stomp.
The trumpeter and sax player provide soul horns, and the bow ties and flat caps worn by her backing singers are styled after The Temptations. You can check the Supremes-like intro on her new album's title track, "Back to Black", while "Addictive", in which she lays into a lover for smoking all her weed, has a Booker T feel.
She messes up from time to time, but shrugs it off nonchalantly and humorously. She seals it with the kiss-off: "You're excellente, like Ferrero Rocher." How can you resist?
A version of this review has already appeared in some editions of the paper
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