79 Back to Black

AMY WINEHOUSE 2006

“It’s a constant thing for me to better myself,” Winehouse said before she embarked on the making of

“Back to Black.” “I’ve got a clear ambition now, to make a record of what I hear in my head . . . and I don’t want strings.” The great, melodramatic girl-group records of the Sixties became the perfect backdrop for her updated tales of on-again, off-again romance and treachery — the knowingly retro arrangement gave the song a cinematic gravitas (which Winehouse heightened by adopting a beehive do). “The thing that always drove me,” she said, “[is] relationships and how fucked up they can get.”