We all have our addictions. Who can get through the day without the crafty fag, the four o'clock chocolate, or the wee dram after dinner? But not all of us have to wear our addictions publicly, the way that Amy Winehouse and other performers have to. The tragic lass was, however, braver than most in confronting her weaknesses head-on in her art, most notably in her signature song "Rehab", the anthem which went on to win the Grammy for Song of the Year.
"Rehab" was not the first song to confront addiction, but it was certainly unusual in refusing to regard addiction in a completely negative light. Drugs have long provided popular music with one of its more ambivalent subjects, with the image of the jolly "reeferman" a recurring figure in jazz lore, and Ella Fitzgerald's jocular "Wacky Dust" testifying to the properties of cocaine. But alongside this amused indulgence has always lurked an acknowledgement of the darker, less glamorous side of drug abuse, often dangerously intertwined with half-baked notions of creation. Even as Charlie Parker sank deeper and deeper into heroin addiction, countless lesser talents eagerly started on their own drug habits, deluded into believing that opiates might be the key to the seemingly superhuman realms of aesthetic wizardry inhabited by Parker.
Winehouse was clearly no stranger to the tendrils of addiction, using the term as a romantic metaphor for obsession in "Addiction" itself, while some of the most striking songs on her Back to Black album, such as the title track and "You Know I'm No Good", are infused with the underlying sense of wretchedness and self-loathing which often accompanies the condition. Indeed, it could be said that it was in part this desperate self-knowledge that gave her performances such emotional authenticity. But it's for the directness and assertiveness of "Rehab" that Winehouse is liable to be most remembered: just as "Imagine" shot to No 1 the week following John Lennon's murder, so "Rehab" has topped the chart again.
