Recently in The Grammy's Category

What’s all the fuss about Amy Winehouse then? I’m hearing ripples from back across the water that she has “cracked” America, though in light of her drug problems that may be an unfortunate choice of words. With five Grammy’s under her belt (the most ever for a British artist) and a string of hits, Winehouse seems to be laying waste to everything in her path lately – competitors, intoxicants, detractors. It’s pretty hard to argue with such a raw, impulsive talent, but the naysayers of Fleet Street certainly do their best.
Back home, of course, it’s rather a different story. Us Americans are unburdened by the kind of loathsome NME trend-obedience that the British take for granted. If you have obvious talent, we’ll let you in and give you a share of the riches. We might pigeon-hole you and over-analyse your work, but we won’t be lurking in the dark, waiting to ambush you at the first sign of weakness.
It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out for Amy. The positive reaction from America might tempt her to decamp across the pond, away from the insidious British paps, though it would undoubtedly inflate her ego beyond its already-gargantuan proportions, and at the same time lose her a lot of respect at home. Certainly, her sound seems tailor-made for the US, with its eclectic blend of classic girl-group sass, dirty soul diva-ness and cod-jazz credentials, but whether they could cope with her less than squeaky clean image is another matter. She may have scooped a clutch of Grammy’s, but she was denied entry into the country to collect them because of drug convictions. The Eisenhower version of Victorian morality has certainly done a good job of clinging on over recent decades, and celebrities are expected to tow the party line and most definitely not do a party line. If they oblige, they will be treated better than royalty.
But you know what? I think America’s ready. Winehouse’s talent is no flash-in-the-pan, and the average American can see this. No matter, then, that her current lifestyle doesn’t quite square with conservative America – in a few years she’ll have grown up and the voice will still be there, probably better than it is now. The denied visa will be a distant memory by then, and before long Amy Winehouse will be refusing to go stay with Betty Ford in the form of some defiant soul anthem. So the advice I have for my adopted country is this: don’t push your luck with such a lucrative home-grown product or she’ll go the way of the Empire – into our dollar-grubby hands.