My girl won the motherfucking Grammy.

Current mood: satisfied


That's right, Amy Winehouse. Yeah. Fuck you for snickering.

She won motherfucking Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. More than that, she made me watch the Grammys for the first time in fifteen years.

I haven't given two shits about popular music in close to two decades because most of it is pure unadulerated shite spat out of ProTools-addicted throwaway hit machine onto a dopey undiscriminating Wal-mart addled public. Gone are the Clash, Eddie Cochran, the Ramones, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Billie Holliday, Janis, Jimi, and Elvis. Gone too, is the new rawness of the medium, the flawed nude beauty, the fury, the rock, the roll. It's been processed until everything that made it transcendent is pressed out, and all that's left is a tasteless concoction bland as Miracle Whip.

So I don't give a shit that Amy Winehouse smokes crack. I don't care if she has knockdown dragout brawls with her junkie husband in the streets of London, is frequently photographed looking like shit, and takes a page from the Johnny Thunders book of Rock and Roll Self-Destruction. I can't stop her, and it isn't my place to try. What I can do, however, is listen to her album. Over and over, and get excited about an artist in a way that I haven't since the Sex Pistols.

Before the tabloids, the fame, the cameras, and all the crap that comes with it, Amy Winehouse made the best album to surface in years. She did it without being a thought-free jailbait Barbie Doll, all gloss and plastic tits, and no gritty filling. She did what Joss Stone only wishes she was capable of doing; she made a fucking soul album in a world that's forgotten what soul is. And she did it the old-fashioned way without being a paler copy of her better forbears. For one thing, the bitch wrote the songs herself. As a response to trauma in her young life, she sat down and made songs that mean something more than a way to sell Nikes. Beyonce can't, Rihanna doesn't, Britney probably doesn't even know how to write, much less write lyrically. The girl has a right to sing the blues, and no snarky paparazzo can take that away from her. If Billie, Bessie, and Etta had been in the spotlight in the throes of their own addictions, it would have looked like this. No more, no less.

Should Amy take better care of herself? Sure. Is she on a path that leads to grief and heartache? Absolutely. But there are hundreds, no, thousands of pop stars on the charts today who lead--if not scrubbed clean, then at least reasonably shiny--lives who then turn around and make horrible, unlistenable forgettable crapfest albums. Self-important emo, melted down fluffy punk alloys, regrettable pop tart farts, wonder bread country shite, and soulless rap that's nearly a minstrel show in its ghetto fetishism. So I ask you, what's a worse crime? As a listener, what's more important, role models or balls-out musical fury?

I remember the first time I heard 'Rehab' through my friend Robin's earbuds. I went out and bought the album that day. I couldn't--couldn't get that wonderful music out of my head. It was more of a compulsion than a mere want; upon buying it, I put it in my car stereo and listened to it nonstop for a month straight. I actually wore it out from use, a fate reserved for only my cherished favourites. There are 5 albums I'll own as long as I'm on this earth, in whatever form musical paraphenalia takes. In this decade, only two new albums have been added to this list: Mike Ness's Cheating at Solitaire, and this one.

So Amy can continue on her path, whichever way it turns. If she's (and we're) lucky, she'll climb out of this mess she's gotten herself into and go on to make a dozen more wonderful fucking albums. She's certainly got the chops in a way that 99.999999% of modern artists just don't. If she's unlucky, we can add her name to the long list of talented artists who broke under the weight of their own battles. It won't make her music one iota less the mother. fucking. shit.

So g'wan, Amy. Tell the world to go fuck itself.