BACK TO BLACK

Now we all know there's something seriously wrong with Amy Winehouse, but most of us would agree that it's nothing that cutting down on booze and pills and having a good wash wouldn't eventually cure. Oh, and getting a divorce, naturally. Well, maybe it isn't so, because James Hannaham, who appears to be a cross between Sigmund Freud and Lester Bangs feels that he may have pinpointed Amy's real problem, as he points out on Salon.com.

She's just going through the usual 'black' problems, and the usual 'Jewish' problems, though I never saw Sammy Davis Jr wandering around Las Vegas at five in the morning in his jeans and bra with no make-up on. Sinatra, yes; Davis, never. Let Hannaham, in his in-no-way-self-important tone explain.

"As the latest in a long tradition of Brits working in a black American idiom, Winehouse recognises that otherness is part and parcel of the blues, but that her Jewishness is a liability - play it up too much and you're perceived as an oddity, like Jewish reggae rapper Matisyahu. So, as Shel Silverstein once asked of an aspiring bluesman, "What do you do if you're young and white and Jewish... and the only levee you know is the Levy who lives on the block?"

Nail on the head. Just what I was thinking. Christ, there's more.

"Winehouse answers that question by digging deep for scraps of authenticity... she acts out and 'keeps it real' by defending her drug and alcohol addictions, and by standing by her jailed ne'er-do-well husband. The whole package smells like a bizarre simulation of a familiar black stereotype."

And this whole article sounds like an eager sixth-form student pulling words out of the air in a rush to complete his psychology mock A level paper.

It may be a convincing argument, but I still don't think the drugs, the husband and the family with one hand constantly on the blowers to the newspapers are helping Amy either, you know?