I'm Sorry, but Amy Winehouse does not sing R&B...(or Jazz)

Well at least according to the Grammy people Amy & Alicia are not competing at all in the same R&B category. I don't believe Amy was nominated for any of the R&B awards that Alicia won and vice versa---Alicia was not nominated in any of the 5 categories that Amy won. Bottom line though I was very very pleased (as the daughter of a jazz musician) to see Herbie Hancock win Best Album of the Year.....that was awesome!

I completely agree with your statement that Amy Winehouse does not sing R&B or Jazz. And she definitely does not remind me of Billy Holiday outside of the reason you indicated above. Personally I think the whole genre distinction is becoming limiting, because what category do we put Winehouse in? She's not Pop, nor Rock...Alternative I suppose is the best category but even that is usually in reference to an alternative to hard rock. Maybe we need a genre called Brit R&B. ;-)

Alicia Key's is definitely an R&B singer, but I don't think she deserved that award for a song that most people would agree is a horrible display of her (and this part is my opinion) mediocre talent. She does however sound pretty good live. Amy Winehouse's first album was actually much better than Back to Black and it did sound like an R&B LP. I'm pretty good at knowing voices and I didn't even recognize the voice or the style which did not resemble the Amy Winehouse many know and love today.

What ever happened to paying one's dues? Alicia certainly has. She has the talent and appeal, but also the training and work ethic of a professional. Amy Winehouse has a smoky voice with lots of potential, but honestly she doesn't know how to sing - it's all attitude and no musicianship (or diction). In short, you title could have simply been "Amy Winehouse does not sing." But that is putting the cart before the horse. This young woman is a mess, but without the depth that one needs to turn a mess into the blues. I hope she will realize her potential one day.

I think they need to have a separate Grammy for Irresistible Hook - that's what Rehab has. But that's all.

I, too, cheered the Herbie Hancock award.

You article definitely made me think. I've never been a huge fan of Amy Winehouse's music and I was shocked that she won 5 Grammy Awards. I would definitely place her in the Jass category before R&B, but even that does not suite her style. In order for her music to be considered true Jazz she needs more music. Her songs don't have a unique beat, they're more just her slowly dragging out words. I think she has the ability to be a great artist, but right now I don't think she is. She definitely does not compare to Alicia Keys in any manner.

She's an interesting character, a lot like the Stones in 1963, popular in spite of herself and sort of R&B (in the original sense of the word, not the current hip-hopish stuff) as were the Stones.

Minor technicality, but the first link in your article is to a webstie ByronCrawford, not Brian.

I'd have to say that Amy Winehouse is certainly within the tradition of Pop, especially el weirdo-futuristic brit pop that has been coming aroud in the last several years. But one has to say that the set up of her songs are Motown/ Phil Spector takes on r&b music, but in a much more hyperkinetic Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique sense. I do know that when she was originally touring she played with a band that had in essence been playing soul/ r&b since the 70's, this was not the group that was backing her the other night on the Grammy's. I'd venture to guess that when the horns are playing the riff in the track, with the guitars on the two, walking bassline we are not dealing necessarily with techno-ified cookie cutter "automatic popstar" music anymore...
The first time I heard the track "re-hab," it was at a bowling alley in Detroit, I was with a friend who is a huge Eta James fan, she looked aghast and I said to her, "Who the hell made a robot sound like Eta James or some ghetto-ified Barbara Steisand."
Horrified, she said," Nope, its that wastrel Amy Winehouse, ghetto brit girl, @!$%# her."
I was like, "Hmm weird stuff here."
I went out and got the album the next day, I could not stop playing it. Subsequently, I believe that it was one of the best Pop albums of last year.
The reason is that it is lyrically superbly coy, nasty business, but set up with compositional structures that modern listeners have been trained to accept as 60's soul music. However the production value is so wickedly not soul, certainly more like dub or hip hop/ techno that it appears to be samples. Yet when one reads the liner notes, one can clearly see this was a large band/ r&b soul set up, if one includes the Specials as an r&b soul band. That is why this was a great album, and hopefully she'll release some more strange music in the future, hopefully more along the line of The Specials as opposed to weirdo coked out Supremes music.
Nice article though, good to clear the air about some misconceptions, and the obvious Brit press jizz bomb machinations, revisionist history embellishments that they always strive way to hard to put out there. Billy Holiday my ass, did these toothless goons ever hear Madeleine Peyroux's first album? Hell David Sedaris singing Cadillac radio commercials mimicry of Billy Holiday is vastly more on target, even if it is for the sake of humor.

Unfair comparing almost anybody to Alicia Keys, IMHO. She's in a class by herself.

Ms. Winehouse could develop into a fine performer someday. The attention she is getting now is ridiculously out of proportion to the music she is making and I think she knows this. She does not seem like a stupid person.

Important question for music history fans:

How many people can you name who are mentioned by name in a Bob Dylan song and were alive at the time he wrote the lyrics?

I can think of two.

I totally agree with you. Amy Winehouse is definitely not R&B. She has more of blues, maybe mixed with a little jazz, but not R&B. I don't even like Alicia Keys new work, but I would pick her over Amy Winehouse any day. As far as her personal life of being in rehab, well what artist hasn't been in rehab now a days. I can't believe that their life would be so miserable that they would have to turn to drugs. Maybe they should have payed attention in school to all the say no to drug campaigns.

I didn't sit still for the awards, haven't in awhile.

Just wanted to drop a note, loving Alicia Keys as I do.

Miss Keys sets the bar very high, in so many ways: She is classy, stylish, a marvelous singer, and musical artist.

Other stars tend to dim when in the presence of the sun . . .

This kind of reminds me somewhat of comments made by jazz musician Wynton Marsalis and the black jazz critic Stanley Couch regarding the 'cool' 'west coast' style of jazz of the 50's and 60's. Marsalis and Couch tried to contend that 'cool' jazz , as mainly practiced by whites such as Paul Desmond and Stan Getz, wasn't really jazz because it did not follow the forms and structure laid down by jazz pioneers such as Louis Armstrong. What they mean is that, in their opinion, whites can't play jazz.

Of course, 99% of listeners will recognize Getz, Bill Evans, etc. as jazz even if racial prejudice prevents Couch and Marsalis from doing so.

Maybe something similar is at play as regards Winehouse and 'r&b'. I have heard a few of Amy Winehouse' songs and I would categorize her more as pop with r&b and jazz influences, but if she or her flacks want to call her r&b, I think she is close enough to it merit the labeling.

Alicia Keys merits and talents relative to Winehouse have no bearing on the matter.

Once you have a stagnant pop market the tried and true gimmick is to go rob / mimic a previous decade.

Rehash and rehash again!

Long live pop! Pop is dead!

R&B lost its meaning in the 70s when Disco was lumped in.

If I hear it, I know it. It still lives in bars, on CDs, and in small gatherings in folk's rec rooms.

Jazzman - I have to tell you - I purchased this Amy Winehouse CD ----and I LOVE IT.....it is so much more than just the Rehab song....and I highly recommend track number 6.....

I hear more news about Winehouse than music, which is usually only ever 1 track and rarely, on the radio here in Britain. All publicity. They talk more about her than world events. Other than critics and news reports this is the first I've seen of anyone admitting they like her. I did see an interview with Tori Amos where she asked "Who is going to be next when the current greats are gone?" I can't remember where I saw it, but they were trying to spin that toward Amy Winehouse. She is obviously being set up and commercialized.
Her music, like all the music on the radio here, is rot pop. No matter what you throw into it, my ears are so allergic to what is played here and the reality-tv-like rave publicity celebrities get (like Amy Winehouse) that I'm sick of hearing the name.
I don't even recognize Alicia Keys from her Fallin' days anymore, it's a crime to see that the labels seem to be angling toward the same sound to bring everything into a pastiche pop remodernization of what was done before. Most stuff on the radio where I'm at wouldn't be out of place in the 80's next to Men Without Hats or Wham!.
The more powerful the recording industry has become over the years, the less genius we witness in music in the mainstream. They can rehash till the cows come home, I won't be paying for it. It gets played on the radio whether I listen to it or not. Manufactured artist chic seems more appealing to the labels with each passing decade. Imagine, Amy Winehouse is some little kid's idol out there because of all this silly attention she gets over her drug/husband/assault publicity as opposed to... I shudder to think.

In which album are you proclaiming that Winehouse 'cant' or 'doesn't' sing R&B or Jazz? If your'e claiming that Winehouse isn't singing R&B because her styling do not fit completely in with the tempo and key of stereotypical Soul / Rythm and Blues / Jazz, then we can debate that, but then you would have to admit that Usher, R Kelley, and a majority of artists classified as R&B aren't R&B artists because they are less in line with what R&B really is and as close to Jazz as Brittany Spears.
I'll admit that Winehouse isn't like Nina Simone or Billie Holiday, but her comparison to those artists doesn't totally come from lyrical styling, rather it comes from content and the kinds of things she's expressing. In my opinion Winehouse is closer to a modern Ella Fitzgerald with the gritty taboo of Nina Simone.

Further, Winehouse's "Rehab" is a very poor example of her actual style. I suggest you dig a little deeper and review "Frank", her previous album in which she exhibits innumerable similarities to what true Jazz and Soul were. If you absolutely ahve to stay within the "rehab" album, then look at "tears Dry on their Own", "Back to Black", and "You KNow I'm No Good". Despite it being a little more urban in beat structure, the fundamental soul and R&B elements exist vividly.

Keys, I really can't say the same for her , but can say that she's got better vocal control and timbre.

Agreed.  Amy Winehouse isn't jazz, except for the addiction to drugs.  She has that part down great though.