“Back To Black” was the first song Winehouse wrote and recorded for her second album. Mournful strings and an ominous tolling bell create a funereal atmosphere, which is dramatically juxtaposed with a danceable, retro-slanted musical backdrop inspired by 60s girl-group pop and Phil Spector’s wall of sound production values.
Using the word “black” as a metaphor for the abyss of depression, “Back To Black” is a bleak, grief-stricken portrait of heartbreak purportedly inspired by Winehouse’s ex-boyfriend’s infidelity. The happy-go-lucky vibe of her debut was replaced by a much darker autobiographical hue on Back To Black, which explored the emotional turmoil the singer felt after splitting up with her boyfriend, Blake Fielder-Civil.īuy Amy Winehouse’s iconic song “Back to Black” on limited edition picture disc here.Īlthough the album’s biggest hit was the infectious “Rehab,” about Winehouse’s real-life battle with addiction, arguably its cornerstone was its title song, a cathartic symphony of sadness written by the singer together with Mark Ronson, the London-born US producer who helmed six of Back To Black‘s eleven songs. The notoriety that Frank brought Winehouse meant that the public’s expectations for Back To Black were sizable but no one could anticipate how radically different the new album would be in terms of its sound and themes. The album didn’t quite make Winehouse a household name, but it sold 300,000 copies in her homeland and spawned four charting singles moreover, it also got her shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize and earned a BRIT nomination. Winehouse’s rise had begun just three years earlier in 2003, when the singer/songwriter – a magnetic artist from London’s Camden Town district – released Frank, a debut album whose stylish amalgam of jazz, soul, and funk flavors wowed the critics. When Island Records announced that Amy Winehouse was going to release her second album of songs, Back To Black, a frisson of feverish anticipation gripped those who had been following the 23-year-old’s career.
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