British soul singer Amy Winehouse was found dead this morning in her London flat. Even those people who followed pop music on a cursory basis were probably familiar with Winehouse, or at least her troubles; dubbed (almost too easily) "Wino" by the tabloids both in her homeland and around the world, she was a mainstay on the gossip pages for her problems with alcohol and drugs and her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, not to mention her signature beehive-and-cats-eye look. But her talent was prodigious as both a singer and a songwriter; she wrote or co-wrote all the songs on her stunning 2006 breakthrough Back To Black, an album that she was still working on following up.When she was on, Winehouse had few peers—she wasn't an octave-jumper like other big divas of the moment, but her contralto had a snap to it that enriched even the simplest syllables with a full spectrum of emotion. Back To Black was filled with aching songs like "Love Is A Losing Game" and "You Know That I'm No Good" that chronicled mutually detrimental relationships and the people who stayed in them, for whatever reasons they had. And that she could speak of such pain with a fair amount of lyrical wit is a testament to her talent, which was nurtured at the BRIT School and which resulted in her debut album Frank coming out when she was only 20 years old.
