Lioness: The Hidden Treasures
You could call it her difficult third album.
Celina Murphy, 01 Dec 2011
I feel it is as good a tribute as any to the late Amy Winehouse, that when the news of her death broke on July 23 of this year, the day after my birthday, my thoughts did not suddenly rush to the shaky YouTube clips of her shambolic final show in Serbia five weeks before, or her enjoyable but vacuous performance at Oxegen three years previous. Instead, I immediately thought of a good friend of mine, for whom Amy’s seminal Back To Black acted as a kind of musical pacifier during a particularly rotten break-up. The record came along at just the right time, when she was feeling at her lowest and would take any opportunity to pile us all into her Ford Ka, the other purchase she had made to sooth her heartache, and drive around the city until her arms were sore, with Amy’s voice perpetually blaring from the stereo.
To this girl, and doubtless many others, Amy Winehouse was more than just a singer of retro-styled soul anthems. She was someone with whom to share the pain.
It is now just over four months since the troubled 27 year-old died from alcohol poisoning, and Island Records, along with Amy’s family and long-time musical partners Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, have compiled a career-hopping selection of demos, unreleased originals, covers and alternative versions into the first posthumous Amy Winehouse album, titled Lioness: The Hidden Treasures. The collection comprises 12 songs, recorded between May 2002 and March 2011, most of which have been resurrected from the ashes, remixed and remastered since her death.
“It’s not the album she would have made,” Remi admitted to the press last week. “But these are things I would like people to know that she did.”
As expected, Lioness: The Hidden Treasures is a disjointed record, taking in jazz, doo-wop, reggae and hip hop and bouncing from Frank-era tracks to more recent recordings and back again. Her 2004 version of Carol King’s ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ is a million miles away from the doe-eyed Shirelles version, complete with theatrical string arrangements, Latin-tinged percussion, and a cameo from someone who’s mighty handy with a pair of castanets. ‘Between The Cheats’ is much more Shirelles-esque, although the 2008 composition will probably be remembered as a taunt at ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil rather than a brilliant, piano-driven, Ronettes-brand pop ditty. Beginning with the lines, “I would die for the boy/ I’d take a thousand thumps for my love”, it’s far from the razor-tongued outburst the title hints at.
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