What a deeply sad waste of a young and talented life. The sudden death of jazz/soul singer Amy Winehouse, whose body was found in her London home at the weekend, has appalled even those who know little of her music.
Such a death is inevitably shocking. Yet it could hardly be said to have been a surprise since she was clearly hooked into a spiral of self-destruction. The singer had battled drug and alcohol addiction for years.
Three years ago her mother, Janis, said she was watching her daughter slowly kill herself. Whatever demons were driving her, she was clearly addicted to behaviour that would most probably end her life. And at the age of 27, this lost soul finally succumbed.
It’s a tragedy for her relatives, who were forced to watch her disintegration. But it’s also a tragedy with wider implications.
It is awful to see a young life cut short for whatever reason. But to see it wilfully destroyed is worse.
The terrible contrast between the singer’s glorious voice and the debased conclusion to her once glittering career, as she stumbled around a Serbian stage last month too drunk to remember her own lyrics and being booed and jeered by the crowd, was stark.
Unlike other celebrities living debauched lives, her relentless self-destruction was especially painful to watch because she appeared to be so vulnerable. The prodigy, whose early pictures show a healthy, cheery girl, degenerated into a thin, nervy waif locked into some private hell.
The singer went through a process of “cold turkey” to get her off drugs but she turned instead to alcohol and the sorry process of disintegration inexorably continued.
True, she chose the louche lifestyle that eventually claimed her life. But many others were complicit.
The man she married, Blake Fielder-Civil, reportedly introduced her to hard drugs. And drug-taking is commonplace in the celebrity circles in which she moved.
But responsibility should surely extend much more widely. For the fame of Winehouse did not rest solely upon the quality of her voice. Her public appeal also lay in the very lifestyle that killed her.
The soap opera of her deeply dysfunctional life boosted her appeal and commercial value. This is openly acknowledged.
At the weekend, commentator India Knight wrote (after telling us how devastated she was by the singer’s death): “And I loved that she was a bad girl with bad appetites: a breed that, with her passing, heads further into extinction.” Knight appears to regret there is now one person less to behave in this way.
What is this perverse yearning for yet more bad behaviour and self-destruction? And doesn’t such a comment itself add to the climate of indifference or even approval that makes such tragedies even more likely?
Winehouse was described as a “poster child for drug addiction”. More than that, she was a poster child for self-destruction.
But, for some people, self-destruction has its own fascination and glamour. They shared vicariously in her torment, lapping up news of her latest excesses – assuming, in the fantasy world they appear to inhabit, that she would one day manage to finally defeat her demons.
Those fantasies are promoted by the entertainment world, which positively lionises and encourages the self-destructive behaviour that brings in such handsome rewards.
Much of the marketing of such stars cynically milks the appeal of the “wild child” and the prurient fascination of the public with celebrity lives careering out of control.
Indeed, the music and fashion industries appear to regard their excesses with unlimited indulgence as long as nothing stops them raking in the profits. About six years ago, supermodel Kate Moss was caught on camera apparently inhaling cocaine. Her disgrace, however, was merely a temporary blip. After losing many of her modelling contracts and a brief spell in rehab, she was soon in as much demand as ever.
But far worse, she is now the face of a new lipstick for Dior named “Addict”. It would seem Dior is using Moss’s history of cocaine addiction as a way of boosting the commercial appeal of its lipstick.
With the sad and sordid death of Winehouse, the fantasy lies shattered. Here instead was the ghastly reality. How many ordinary lives have been shattered, after all, because of the addictive example set by such celebrities and the huge influence they wield as style and fashion icons over the impressionable young? – Daily Mail