At the peak of her career, Amy Winehouse is thousands of miles away from where it's all happening. While the Grammy Awards are taking place in Los Angeles, she's standing on a London theater stage, watching via satellite link as she makes history. She wins five Grammys that evening, including awards for best song and best new artist. A record no British female singer had achieved before her.

But just as the trophies don't reach her in that moment, neither does the joy. Winehouse has come straight from rehab; her substance abuse problems have made entry to the United States impossible. Backstage, she says to her best friend: "Without substances, all this is boring." A sentence that says nothing about Amy Winehouse, but everything about addiction.

When Amy Winehouse is remembered today, on July 23rd, nostalgic tragedy will once again take center stage-the image of the failed artist, the passive victim. Yet Winehouse was above all one of the bravest and most extraordinary musicians of her generation.

Women were supposed to be flawless-and then came Amy

To understand Amy's genius, you have to start in London in the early 2000s. The pop world back then was polished, hypersexualized, and dominated by the male gaze. Women in pop were expected to dance with perfect choreography and function flawlessly. And then came Amy. A young Jewish woman from North London, raised on records by Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990), Dinah Washington (1924-1963), and Thelonious Monk (1917-1982). "For me, jazz means expanding one's freedom through music and constantly pushing boundaries", she explained her fascination to "Far Out Magazine".

Record labels competed for her. Amy was raw, honest, and unconventional, with heartbreak as the engine of her songwriting. Her debut album Frank (2003) showed exactly that. Where other pop stars sang superficially about love, Amy told stories about the ugly, chaotic sides of relationships. "I was thinking of you when I came", reads one explanation for an affair to her boyfriend in "I Heard Love Is Blind". She sang about female desire, frustration, and emotional dependency without portraying herself as better than she was.

The breakthrough with "Back to Black"

Her next album, "Back to Black" (2006), was also written in heartbreak, this time triggered by Blake Fielder-Civil (44), whom she had met in 2005 and who briefly left her to return to his ex. Together with producer Mark Ronson (50) and the Dap-Kings, Winehouse created a modern Motown sound that sustainably shaped pop music and influenced artists like Adele (38) or Lana Del Rey (41). But she processed the pain not only with music, but also with alcohol, while simultaneously battling bulimia. When friends and her label wanted to send her to rehab, one of her biggest hits emerged: "They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, 'No, no, no'."

Anyone picturing a drunken wreck in the studio would be mistaken. According to star producer Mark Ronson, despite her problems she worked with intense concentration, had a clear musical vision, wrote the title track in less than an hour, and often needed only a few takes for perfect vocal recordings.

Downfall in front of rolling cameras

Right on time with her worldwide success, Fielder-Civil also returned, this time with hard substances that Amy hadn't consumed before. Now they became a way to cope with the pressure of sudden fame and the difficult relationship. When Fielder-Civil had to go to prison in 2008 and filed for divorce a year later, the destroyed singer had already become the favorite subject of the tabloid press.

The paparazzi hunted her in packs, late-night hosts turned her crises into jokes, her body marked by bulimia was publicly judged. Amy was reduced to a "trainwreck" whose decline was broadcast live on television. The crucial point was forgotten: Her addiction wasn't a character flaw and certainly not entertainment, but a serious illness.

She distanced herself from hard substances after rehab, but continued to numb her problems with alcohol binges. In June 2011, she was supposed to give her comeback concert in Belgrade; instead, it became her public low point. In front of 20,000 spectators, Amy stumbled confused across the stage and couldn't sing her songs. Several weeks of abstinence followed, before a three-day relapse on July 23, 2011, led to fatal alcohol poisoning. Amy Winehouse died at age 27, alone in her house in Camden.

The final recording

Amy Winehouse's alcohol addiction is part of her story. Her life shows how destructive this disease can be. The Amy Winehouse Foundation, founded by her family, has since been dedicated to protecting young people from similar dependencies. But when Amy Winehouse is remembered today, the story shouldn't end with her downfall, but with the music she left behind.

Four months before her death, a lifelong dream had been fulfilled: In Abbey Road Studios, she recorded a duet with one of her great idols, legendary jazz singer Tony Bennett (1926-2023). It would be her final studio recording. Bennett was deeply impressed by her talent and compared her to legends like Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) and Billie Holiday (1915-1959). In the documentary "Amy", he said in retrospect that he wished he had given her one piece of advice: "Life teaches us how to live it best, if you live long enough."