20 Years of Back to Black

Trying to come up with my definitive “favorite album of all time” has been a task that’s plagued me every time I’ve attempted it. There’s so much music in the world to love. So many different ways an album can change your life. Trying to single one out above the rest has always felt like trying to pick a favorite child; difficult, arbitrary, and subject to fluctuation.

However, when I’ve had to provide an answer to this question, one album has ended up as my default response. Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black has always lingered in the back of my mind as a work of art that is personally irreplaceable. It seems to be the closest I can get to a true all-time favorite. Released in October of 2006, the album is approaching its twentieth anniversary. It’s a sad thought for me to imagine that people lived and died before this album ever existed, never getting the chance to experience its potency. In honor of two decades of this masterful fusion of jazz, pop, and soul, I will take some time to sing its praises.

Ever since I first listened to it in its entirety during my sophomore year of high school, the songs of this album have provided a soundtrack for several unexpectedly vivid memories throughout my life. Sitting in an airport, waiting to board a flight at 16 years old, hearing the sparkly, breezy opening of “Just Friends” while ruminating on my unrequited crush on one of my friends at the time. Listening to “Tears Dry On Their Own” in the aftermath of that situation and deciding to pick myself up. Driving home from a particularly disappointing romantic encounter and having “Love is a Losing Game” come on in my car, feeling my sadness eased for the song’s 2-and-a-half-minute runtime because I felt so understood. The way this album deals with the core themes of love and loss is what has allowed it to resonate with me throughout many different chapters of my life.

“No-skip record” is an elusive title, tossed around the music criticism community without much agreement on what actually qualifies. I myself have always struggled with assigning this title to any album. Many times that I have, there’s been a kernel of falsity to it. Whenever I say “this album has no skips,” something deep in my soul nags at me, knowing that now and then I do skip that one soppy piano ballad. However. Back to Black just might be the most legitimate choice I could make for a true, no-skip album. That’s because each song reveals more to me the longer I live with it. Back to Black has never felt static; the songs seem to trade places in my estimation depending on where I am in my own life. Songs that weren’t favorites on first listen have now crept up my rankings, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me, telling me to randomly start loving them — and I oblige.

“Wake Up Alone” is a prime example of a song that didn’t stand out to me on first listen, but whose place in my personal rankings has skyrocketed over time. I guess I must have just been on autopilot mode the first time I heard this song, only appreciating the pretty, plucky guitar that leads the instrumental, and not registering the lyrics beyond a surface level. It was only when my brain fully activated that I realized what a beautiful, hypnotic story she was telling. She spends the day keeping herself busy to avoid thinking about her broken heart, but the object of her affliction returns in her dreams once she can no longer escape it. Whether the subject here is a man or alcohol and depression personified through a man could be debated, but I don’t think it truly matters. The ambiguity is part of what makes the song so effective. Amy never clearly distinguishes which of these things she is talking about, so both are presented as agents of destruction that return the moment she is left alone with herself. A song that was an immediate favorite is “He Can Only Hold Her.” A sonically upbeat moment on the album, this song interpolates a young Jimi Hendrix in “My Girl (She’s a Fox),” which is a great song in its own right. This works because “He Can Only Hold Her” is already playing with an old-fashioned sound, and the interpolation gives the song a direct connection to an earlier musical era, which fits the retro quality of Back to Black while still sounding distinctly Amy. The result is an infectious blend of soul, R&B, jazz, and retro-pop. I have listened to this song probably a million times and never gotten sick of it.

The album’s legacy is inextricably intertwined with the tragic circumstances surrounding it. Five years after its release, Amy tragically passed away from alcohol poisoning. Her relationship with substances is an unavoidable presence throughout the record, but knowing what would eventually happen to her makes these songs feel even more haunting in retrospect. I’ve always seen the album’s central motif as a dark but often humorous exploration of two parallel presences in her life: her toxic relationship with a man and her toxic relationship with alcohol and drugs. Nowhere is this motif clearer than in the title track. In the song’s central line, “You go back to her, and I go back to black,” she states this parallel directly. I read the color black in this album as a metaphor for the role of substances in her life, and the emotional states that result when she indulges in them: depression, numbness, and isolation.

When her relationship falls apart and leaves her heartbroken, she retreats into the dark blackness, and the effects echo throughout the entire album. The motif appears in the opening track, “Rehab,” as well. In the chorus, Amy sings, “Yes, I’ve been black, but when I come back, you’ll know.” Given that the entire song is about her refusal to go to rehab and get better, the underlying meaning of “black” in her life is painted quite clearly. It’s this kind of parallelism that makes Back to Black such an impressive and complex album to me. Amy turns the intertwined cycles of romantic heartbreak and self-destruction into one overarching metaphor, allowing the album to function simultaneously as a portrait of a doomed relationship and a portrait of her own harmful impulses.

That's what ultimately makes Back to Black my favorite album, even if I’ve never been comfortable calling anything my favorite. Twenty years after its release, I’m struck by how much more the album seems to reveal the longer it exists in the world. The songs have followed me through different versions of my life, taken on new meanings as I’ve grown up, and somehow become more compelling as I've grown more familiar with them.

Strike Out,

Writer: Annaliese Long

Editor: Alexia Cretoiu

Graphic Designer: Eliza Crawley

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