Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black

Product Information

One of the drawings from Amy Winehouse’s scrapbook. Photograph: Courtesy of The Amy Winehouse Foundation Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Amy Winehouse and I've read all the biography books written about her. I liked this memorabilia. It's a beautiful book but most of the pictures & quotes can be found on the internet and they've been pre-existing there since Amy's breakthrough on the media. Also in some parts it's kinda generic and it doesn't feel personal. I wish Naomi touched more on Amy's style rather than add pictures or small paragraphs that don't really share anything new. Especially considering they were friends for years. For example she could share more tour stories or the process behind dressing Amy in great detail. I expected more. Amy had such a great personality and she read so many books, listened to so many records, browsed through so many Vogue magazines. She loved fashion and she was inspired by so many things in her life. She was and is such an interesting person. Her influences are shared in this book, but in pictures. Some sets were beautiful but they didn't give much info, only vision. I think they should have been discussed more because they made her who she was. Amy is a very important person in today's fashion & music world. She influenced fashion designers and artists to become different and embrace pin up fashion.

In my opinion we already know everything about her life and what she accomplished in the MUSIC world. 3 books have already been written about her process. But no one really touched on her choices in fashion or why she was who she was. Her style gave away so much of who Amy truly was and her personality. The reason why I expected something different from this book was because Naomi was her stylist and she was the person behind the scenes. If not her then who would've been capable of writing such an art book, if not her? It was the perfect opportunity. But ultimately I felt like the Design Museum exhibition shared more about Amy the person than Amy the artist in comparison to this book. Also her friends didn't share enough in my opinion. I don't really want to read a quote from Salaam Remi which was passed through an interview on YouTube. I want something new. A great example was Catriona's story. It was beautiful and the highlight of the book because it truly gave a glimpse of Amy's personality. Also it was a nice shared memory. Especially since Catriona rarely talks about Amy on media or anywhere at all really. The publication date is scheduled for two weeks before what would have been Winehouse’s 40th birthday. She died by an accidental alcohol overdose in July 2011, aged 27, after a string of public struggles with addiction and poor mental health. Did I buy this book impulsively when I just dared to walk around @barnesandnoble to kill some time today? Yes. 🤑

To fully understand Amy Winehouse on what would have been her 40th birthday, this extremely personal and revealing book, filled with her private thoughts and emotions, uncovers the heart of the artist who dreamed big and cared deeply,” said Lisa Sharkey of HarperCollins. “We could not be prouder to publish this cherished keepsake and are grateful to her parents Janis and Mitch for sharing their daughter in this sensitive beautiful book.”

There is a photo of Amy’s 5 Grammy Awards. Her sense of style is shown in still pictures where her instruments and the mementos of her life are lovingly arranged. The book is visually beautiful. It is arranged chronologically with photos of Amy and her personal items. You see Amy performing, posing and putting on make up. There are reproductions of her hand written drafts of lyrics and many of her clothes. All photos are in color. The paper is high quality making the book heavy to hold.In conclusion, if you're a hardcore Amy fan you already know or you have seen half of these things shared here in this book. Unfortunately they recycled quotes, interviews and pictures which I'm not a fan of considering I paid for this book. But hell, it's not even about the price but the fact that this art book didn't fullfill the thirst I had to know more about Amy's style. Interspersed throughout are personal reflections on Amy’s life and work, provided by her friends, colleagues, and fans. These include Ronnie Spector, Vivienne Westwood, Bryan Adams, Little Simz, and Carl Barât, as well as Doug Hawley Landlord of the Hawley Arms, tattooist Henry Hate, goddaughter Dionne Bromfield, and DJ Bioux. Each one has a personal story to share, and together their anecdotes and reflections build into a complex picture of a much admired but troubled star. Vice Culture Editor Emma Garland puts these insights into context with an introduction that highlights the principal events and achievements in Amy’s life and work, and the key characters that played a part in it. This is a work heavy on juvenilia and understandably light on the times after Winehouse’s debut album, Frank, was released in 2003. By then, she had been an independent adult for some time, with her own filing system. Her parents reveal that Winehouse accidentally killed her own hamster, they reprint a “mind map” of her school friendships and share her tortured teenage love poetry and the lyrics to a song to a superhero feline called Buff Cat. Some names, such as one on a school-era notebook snippet titled “rating lads”, are redacted. Tldr: Great art book but most of the material can be found already on the internet. There are some beautiful shared stories here from friends but they didn't share much. Also her fashion sense wasn't touched that much. It was more vision than discussion which is a bummer because I expected more from Naomi Parry.