It’s 20 years since Amy Winehouse released her masterpiece Back to Black and 15 since she died at a frighteningly young age. A good way to appreciate how special she was is to watch the Amy Winehouse Band trot through a few lesser songs and cover versions and spot what’s missing: her playfulness, bite, anarchic charisma and taste. Winehouse mixed soul, jazz, hip-hop, two-tone and 60s girl groups because she loved that music more than anything. Without her animating fandom, a cover of Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals is just a cover of Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals; for all her old band’s precision and gusto, it has no pressing reason to exist.
The main event, in which Back to Black producers including Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi hand-pick singers such as Jorja Smith, Lianne La Havas and Corinne Bailey Rae to recreate the album, is stronger except that it’s primarily staged for a BBC TV show, which means the flow is broken by onstage interviews and hagiographical patter from Jo Whiley. It’s a little grating to be constantly told that a concert is amazing even as it unfolds, but that’s TV for you.
Even performed out of sequence, Back to Black remains a miraculous set of modern love songs in vintage clothing – tragic, defiant and bitterly funny – but re-enactments can be limiting. One distinctive singer after another faithfully emulates Winehouse’s sly, gutsy phrasing and thus submerges herself. The show really crackles when something new materialises, such as Jessie Reyez tearing through Rehab with conviction or London trio Flo splitting the difference between TLC and the Supremes on He Can Only Hold Her. Yebba’s spectral, minimalist take on Love Is a Losing Game, with Ronson on guitar, would delight the Twin Peaks Roadhouse.
The ecstatic, mic-passing ensemble finale of Valerie is unexpectedly moving in that it presents a diverse tableau of Winehouse’s musical sisters and daughters and allows for a rare element of chaos. It ensures that this lovingly curated tribute leaves a pleasing glow. It’s just that Amy didn’t glow; she burned.
