Amy Winehouse’s music videos were something special, “Rehab” in particular. Nearly a decade has passed since the song’s release, and Amy sadly passed away nearly four years ago. This song, originally enjoyed to some comic effect, rarely gets airtime on radio and television today. Its tone cuts a little too close to the bone – Winehouse’s ode to her own addiction that ended her life can be hard to take years on, knowing her own sad fate.
When I saw the music video for Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” for the first time, it was my assessment that the band that follow her throughout the house act as a metaphor for addiction, and what a beautiful one at that.
The band are always behind Amy throughout the video’s blocking, acting as company, but with no real interaction – they are absently present, not engaged with each other or with Amy. A secondary presence in a promotional video, most certainly, but the scene being in the domestic setting adds to the sense of Amy being locked in and locked down. Their faces are indistinct, obscured by objects and shadows or downward facing. Amy’s articulation of addiction in the lyrics partners well with their visual presence. “And so I always keep a bottle near” makes the song’s meaning so loud and clear. This is about dependancy, a bond. According to her own storytelling, there is always a bottle in the back of her mind.
Amy had an almost cartoonish aesthetic – her beehive hair, pin-up tattoos and dramatic eye make-up, modernly matched with her beauty spot piercing and her rhythm and blues style swagger. Performance was meaningful to her – the earnestness of her storytelling was accompanied by a protective visual shield. Her assertion that wraps the song’s chorus, “no, no, no”, was so radical at the time of release in 2006. Winehouse made for such a frank account of her own fallibility, and so defensive. For a female performer relatively new to the international music scene, this could be too shocking for audiences to absorb as pop, and today, perhaps even still – knowing Amy’s tragic fate.
Today, I don’t think I would read the video the same way. Amy so spectacularly speaks for herself, I now know, and was soon to learn this as other singles from “Back to Black” emerged. As she rose to greater and greater fame, this performer didn’t need metaphorical backing in her video content, though these dark themes however continued. The video for the single “Back to Black” is so very dark, a black and white account of Amy attending her own funeral. The lead song on Amy’s second and final album, Amy’s imagined death is the visual aid to a failed love.
Amy was indeed a great musical artist, and needless to say her passing happened far too early. Its heartening to see that her videos held such visual integrity, owed the the soul of a true artist.
