Aimy Winehouse -- who knows her?

She is a complete package, perhaps too complete in some respects. She is a brilliant, highly skilled and charismatic singer, but clearly has personal demons that are likely to kill her, and, or her career way too soon.

Her phrasing, intonation and vocal timbre sometimes remind me of Sarah Vaughn, sometimes of Nina Simone, but, perhaps, most of all Carmen McCrae. Compare Amy's version of "Moody's Mood for Love" from the "Frank" CD (brilliant...BTW) with Carmen's "The Best is Yet to Come" from the "Sarah:Dedicated to You" CD, and, perhaps, you'll see what I mean.

She also writes great songs. They are melodically and rhythmically quirky and startlingly direct emotionally, and have the great melodic hooks that press the infinite repeat button in your brain. Just try to get "You Know I'm No Good" out of your head after hearing it twice.

I knew this chick was amazing 10 seconds after I heard her singing "Rehab" on Leno one night. She also looked like she had just finished sleeping off a 3-day bender. So...catch while you can cause I'm pretty sure she won't see 30.

You're right on the money Cutocycle. The "Back to Black" CD seems to have been deliberately engineered to have somebody's lame idea of a grainy, peaky retro sound that is very grating. I picked up an EP containing remixes of "Back to Black" and "I'm No Good" that have scrubbed that part of the production away and the vocals are startlingly more clear and focused. There are other aspects of what is done to the songs that I'm not wild about, but Amy's voice is much better presented.

Cutocycle,

Never been a huge fan of CD sound though I do agree that $5k to $10k is the buy in for a vinyl rig that doesn't miss any of the essentials. The difference between the CD and LP versions of the Stripes' "Elephant" remains one of the most amazing of my experience. The LP so lunches the CD that it almost seems like different music. Frickin' nuts if you ask me.