For this 19-year-old fan, Amy Winehouse’s music has been a constant for as long as they can remember. From the songs that soundtracked their childhood to the beehive that inspired their own sense of style, Amy’s honesty, individuality and fearlessness continue to offer comfort, confidence and creative inspiration.

Amy’s music has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’m 19 now and I still listen to her every single day. I most likely discovered her through my parents, so her music has always felt familiar and comforting to me, almost like a soundtrack that has followed me from childhood into adulthood.

What struck me most was the deep, raw honesty in her music. Even when I was younger, there was something incredibly real about what I was hearing and seeing. Her voice and lyrics felt so emotional and genuine, and that kind of honesty is something I don’t think anyone could ever truly match.

I’ve always adored Amy’s iconic beehive and the way she embraced vintage style. I’m completely taken with Amy’s iconic beehive look. I love 1950s fashion, so seeing her make that aesthetic completely her own gave me more confidence to express myself through fashion. I’ve definitely tried a beehive hairstyle because of her! I loved that she never seemed interested in fitting in. She was unapologetically herself, and that encouraged me to embrace my own personality more freely.

When it comes to her music, Take the Box and In My Bed are my all-time favourites. I also absolutely love her version of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow. Those songs capture everything I love about Amy — the emotion, the storytelling and that completely unique voice. There’s a vulnerability in the way she sings that makes it feel as though everything is coming directly from the heart.

Amy showed me that it’s okay to be different and not hide the things that make you unique. Authenticity is probably been her biggest influence on me. Her music feels deeply human, and the honesty in her lyrics has stayed with me as I’ve grown up. She has inspired me emotionally as well as creatively, which is why her presence still feels so powerful in my life.

Amy inspires me every day because her music has always been there through every version of myself. She’s there when I feel nervous and need comfort, but she’s also there when I feel confident and want to embrace who I am. I listen to her music every single day, and it has this incredible ability to make me forget everything else and just be present in the moment. Her honesty, individuality, and fearlessness continue to inspire me, both personally and creatively. Amy reminds me to express myself and stay true to who I am.

There are so many songs on Back to Black that choosing a favourite feels almost impossible. Me and Mr Jones, Tears Dry on Their Own, He Can Only Hold Her and Rehab are probably the ones that stand out most to me, if I had to pick. Each one shows a different side of Amy’s talent — her storytelling, emotion, humour and incredible ability to transform personal experiences into something other people can recognise themselves in. To me, the whole album feels like a piece of art.

I think Amy remains such an important cultural figure because she was completely original. Her voice, songwriting and style were instantly recognisable, and she brought a level of honesty to music that still feels rare. She didn’t try to be anyone else, and I think that authenticity is one of the reasons people continue to connect with her. Her influence on music, fashion and popular culture is still visible today, while the emotions in her songs remain timeless and relatable.

Her music has always been there through every version of myself. She’s there when I feel nervous and need comfort, but she’s also there when I feel confident and want to embrace who I am. Listening to Amy has this incredible ability to make me forget everything else and simply be present in the moment. Her honesty, individuality and fearlessness continue to inspire me every day, reminding me to express myself and stay true to who I am.

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A chance encounter with You Know I’m No Good as a teenager changed everything for Venezuelan superfan David Bonalde. Here, the creator of Todos Sobre Amy Winehouse, AmyWinehousePerfecta, and @amywinehousehd reveals how Amy’s music became a lifelong source of inspiration and connection.

I was 13 years old when I came across a video about Amy Winehouse’s life. In the background, You Know I’m No Good was playing, and from the moment I heard that voice, I was completely captivated. What impacted me most was that I discovered her only three months before she passed away, which was heartbreaking. I asked my mom to buy me Back to Black, and when I started listening to it, I felt something different with every song. For a long time, I listened almost exclusively to Amy because no one else made me feel that way. I even started drawing pictures of her and putting them all over my walls.

I was surprised by how someone I had never met could evoke so many emotions in me. This sparked my interest in learning about her – her artistic journey, her songs and the meaning behind her lyrics. As I delved deeper into her story, I felt a strong emotional connection, almost as if I knew her personally. Her music helped me better understand her emotions, experiences and inner struggles. I could sense a great deal of sensitivity and authenticity in everything she expressed through her art.

Wake Up Alone accompanied me through a complicated relationship. Amy managed to express feelings of love, loneliness and emotional dependency with such honesty that it felt as though she was telling part of my own story. The way Amy conveys the emptiness of missing someone made me feel understood. Every time I listen to her, I reconnect with deep emotions and memories.

What impacted me most was how authentic Amy was. Her lyrics spoke about emotions and experiences in a very honest, unfiltered way. It felt like she was saying things that many people feel, but few dare to express. Her style was also unique. Her hairstyle, eyeliner, dresses and overall image made her a fashion icon. But beyond the aesthetics, what truly captivated me was her talent and her ability to convey emotion through her songs.

She had a one-of-a-kind voice and an impossible-to-ignore presence. Amy was never afraid to show her feelings, or reveal her mistakes or difficult moments through her music. That honesty made people feel connected to her.

Amy remains such an iconic figure because she was unique. Not only did she have an incredible voice and extraordinary talent, but she was also a gifted songwriter who wrote with remarkable honesty. Her songs felt real. Amy also influenced an entire generation of artists. Her musical style, songwriting and authenticity left a mark that can still be seen today. She also defined an era through her image, hairstyle, eyeliner and fashion, becoming both a style and pop culture icon.

A large part of my work is dedicated to keeping her legacy alive. I’m a content creator and have built a large community across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, bringing together people from different parts of the world who share the same love for Amy. Her influence on my life has been so significant that I even have a tattoo of her on my arm as a way of honouring an artist who shaped my personal story.

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The Dap-Kings are the Brooklyn-based, 21st-century equivalent of legendary studio bands like the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section or The Wrecking Crew – musical collectives that shaped the sound of countless hit records in the 1960s and 70s. The Dap-Kings are a band in their own right, working alone and with the late, Grammy-winning singer Sharon Jones, but are also the hard-grooving engine of the Daptone universe – the label and studio through which they fronted a mid-2000s funk and soul revival. And Mark Ronson was besotted with them.

The Back to Black producer would regularly call on the Dap-Kings throughout the early to mid-2000s whenever he needed a punchy horn line or driving rhythm section. During one such studio session for Ronson’s own 2006 album Versions, the band’s trumpeter Dave Guy played him a demo of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ cover of Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours. It blew Ronson’s socks off. He knew immediately the Dap-Kings were the key to making a British singer he was about to start working with sound old, yet startlingly brand-new.

Given the green light by Amy Winehouse, Ronson hired the band to cut six tracks for Back to Black at the Daptone Studio at 115 Troutman, Brooklyn, bringing in tenor saxophonist Neal Sugarman, baritone saxophonist Ian Hendrickson-Smith and Dave Guy on horns, drummer Homer Steinweiss and bassist Nick Movshon in the rhythm section, and Binky Griptite and Thomas Brenneck on guitar.

Of the sessions – which gave us Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Back to Black, Love Is a Losing Game, Wake Up Alone and He Can Hold Her, and later, Valerie – Ronson said: “I’ve had maybe three musical moments in my life when I’ve felt like I’m floating while hearing something, just having an out-of-body experience. One of those moments was walking into the control room at Daptone on day one of tracking Amy.”

Twenty years on, we asked Daptone co-founder and Dap-Kings saxophonist Neal Sugarman what it was like working with Amy on a record that changed everything for them and the singer.

Can you remember when Mark Ronson first mentioned Amy to you?

I remember exactly what he said. He was like, “Hey, you guys, I have this project, I think it’s going to be really big.” But we were just like, “Whatever, cool, a day in the office,” you know? There were different singers that we were working with through Mark; we’d done some Lily Allen stuff, we did the Daniel Merriweather record and we did that Versions record. So when he called, we knew what the style was, his process and that it was cool.

Why did he bring you onboard?

We’re a soul band, and Mark loved that music. That’s one of the things that makes him a great producer. Knowing what he heard in Amy and putting together the best musicians he felt were going to be able to bring the concept to life… And another thing I felt he was really good at is he’d give the band some artistic feelings, you know? Like, “What do you guys hear?” Some of the stuff he’d pre-written, and some of the horn lines, he let us work them out. We were peers, we were friends and we were trying to make cool-sounding music.

Did you ever work with Amy in the studio?

Mark had the vocals on a little CD thing that was easy for him to sync up with the rhythm section. The only time we really recorded with Amy live was Valerie. Otherwise, he had demos, and after he did the rhythm section, he would go back and work on the melodies. But he and Amy had the songs fleshed out and we were working with him closely on arrangements, especially horn lines and things. We were hired guns, and we were just doing what we did.

Can you remember when you first actually met Amy?

I run the [Daptone] record label, so I was kind of the point person, for better or worse, and I remember they were looking to rehearse because we were doing a showcase. I got some real shitty rehearsal space in a friend’s basement. I didn’t understand how big this project was, you know? I probably could’ve said, “Oh, we’re going to hire SIR in Manhattan,” but I was like, “Man, I can save them some money.” So we all met on this street corner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where we were going to go into our friend’s basement. We were waiting around for her for a while, getting a little nervous, and then she came along and she’d gone record shopping. If you’re going to be late, that should be the reason – like, it’s cool if you were at Academy Records, and you just found all the Dinah Washington records you ever wanted, and that’s why you’re 30-40 minutes late. So she had the right excuse, you know? And then it was very cool. She was a great musician, she had unbelievable ears, and she really enjoyed being around the band.

That sounds like a quintessential Amy experience!

Yeah! No one said anything twice about the studio. It was only when she came back, and they didn’t ask me to find the rehearsal space, and we ended up in one of those fancy-pants places.

What was your first impression of Amy?

I’d never heard of Amy up to that point. She had that first record out, but it wasn’t my world. So obviously we were deep into this record because we were working on it for a while, you know, and we had these ideas: she’s this English girl, a little wild. But she looked cool, her typical thing, but she was on point. She sang great and was super nice, and then we did the rehearsal, and she’s like, “Hey, let’s go out for dinner.” It was always cool.

Were you still playing live with Amy as Back to Black took off?

We were still doing 400-capacity rooms, not big rooms. Then we did Coachella, which was amazing, because we got to see some movie stars. That always feels kind of fun, you know? Even backstage at the show in LA, Bruce Willis was there. Amy had a lot of respect for the band, though. The Dap-Kings are a great band, and we were like a family, so it was probably cool for her to come into that vibe. We’d do these gigs, and she would always take us out. It wasn’t ever like, “OK, see you tomorrow.”

How did you prepare for live shows in your shared dressing room?

It was all doo-wop, girl groups, Motown stuff – and that’s what grounded us. If we felt the opposite about things, we would’ve done the gig, but the vibe would’ve been different. I think that was part of Amy’s pain, you know? Back to Black got so hyped, and she just wanted to jam, all the way up to the very end. We were playing in London shortly before she died, doing three or four nights with Sharon Jones at the Jazz Cafe, and Amy would come out to the shows and invite us over to her apartment because she wanted to play. That’s all she wanted.

How did Back to Black change things for the Dap-Kings?

We’d just finished the Sharon Jones record, 100 Days, 100 Nights, and the Amy record had come out. Every press piece was like, “The band that played on Amy Winehouse’s record,” but then, as our record started to get legs, the Amy Winehouse piece would move from the front of the article to the end. But yeah, there was a minute where every fool was calling us: “Can you play on our record, can you play on our record?” Nothing was as good as the stuff we did with Mark, though.

What role did Back to Black play in kickstarting a mainstream soul revival?

The way the record was recorded and produced, it was one microphone on the horns and the drums had a certain sound that was definitely Homer Steinweiss and the Dap-Kings. The Daptone studio was set up so that you didn’t close-mic all of the drums, and I always say that that was probably the first record in 30 years, or since the early 70s, that would’ve been recorded that way and it had a magic, you know? I always think of those old records, you hear the ear in the studio. We cut that record to tape, and we were really playing it. You really felt it. It was a unique thing and people responded to it – tons of people after were like, “I want to make a record that sounds like Amy Winehouse’s.”

Do you have a standout memory of working with Amy?

Binky [Griptite, guitarist], he’s great, and Amy would always say, “Hey, can you give me the first chord of the tune?” so she could get her notes. He would play some fancy chord and she’s like, “I didn’t ask for the nine and the seven on the chord, can you just play the triad?” So she really was a great musician and that was important to us. She was old school; she loved records and listened to tons of great music. We had to play good, because if we played out of tune, she definitely would’ve heard it.

What made Amy such a special artist?

The songs Amy wrote were profoundly beautiful songs. Her singing her songs was very, very deep. And lyrically, these kind of records come down the pipe very rarely. Everyone liked that Amy Winehouse record – everybody, you know? It was cross-generational. There was something in her music that really connected

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Fly Me to the Moon (1964)

Frank Sinatra

Crooners are never very far away in Amy’s musical journey, so it’s no surprise that Frank Sinatra starts the ball rolling here. Amy even named her debut album, Frank, after Old Blue Eyes. His version of Fly Me to the Moon was, according to Amy’s dad Mitch, her favourite song as a child. The two would sing it together, with Mitch leaving out the word “moon” for a toddler Amy to shout out, and she would later sing the song to cheer herself up before her many tellings-off at school. It was estimated that more than a hundred other versions of Fly Me to the Moon – originally sung by Kaye Ballard in 1954 – had been recorded before Frank Sinatra got his mitts on it in 1964, but his remains the best known. Either because Frank always got his way, or because his timing was impeccable, with the US just a few years away from the Apollo mission that it would become synonymous with.

Lullaby of Birdland (1954)

Sarah Vaughan

Amy’s earliest years were soundtracked by classic, genre-defining jazz vocalists, thanks to the influence of her dad Mitch and nan Cynthia. Among those to leave a big impression on her were Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington. Sarah Vaughan, though, probably meant the most. “Sarah Vaughan is one of my favourite singers of all time,” Amy said. “She was an instrument. I’ve heard one record – it’s like a humming solo – and she sounds like a reed instrument, like a clarinet.” Any number of Vaughan’s tracks could have made the cut here, but Vaughan’s version of Lullaby of Birdland was a beloved favourite of Amy’s that is referenced in 2003’s October Song, about the death of her pet canary, Ava.

Whatta Man (1993)

Salt-N-Pepa

Jealous that her brother was developing his own music tastes – mainly, she later joked, “I-want-to-die bands” like Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam – Amy finally, at the age of nine, came across her own heroes: Salt-N-Pepa. “I was like: ‘I’ve got my music now.’” Such was the impact of discovering the New York group’s 1993 album Very Necessary – featuring the gold-plated banger Whatta Man with En Vogue, built around a sample of Linda Lyndell’s 1968 southern soul classic What a Man – that she and her best friend, Juliette, formed their very own rap duo, Sweet ’n’ Sour (Amy was Sour). It kickstarted a love affair with US hip-hop and R&B that would stretch to TLC, Mary J. Blige and beyond.

Didn’t It Rain (1958)

Mahalia Jackson

A common thread running through so much of the music Amy loved is an unfiltered rawness and honesty, something that would play out in her own songs. A baring of the soul, either in defiance or pain. It’s one of the reasons why she loved the gospel and gospel-soul music of Aretha Franklin and Mahalia Jackson – the voice of the civil rights movement in 1950s and 1960s America, and one of the most influential singers of all time. “I love gospel, because gospel is so truthful,” Amy said. “I’m not religious, but there is nothing more pure than the relationship you have with your God – there is nothing stronger than that apart from your love of music.” She recorded a version of Mahalia Jackson’s Didn’t It Rain for the BBC.

‘Round Midnight (1943)

Thelonious Monk

The sounds coming through the wall from Amy’s brother’s bedroom would, from time to time, still cast an influential spell. One abracadabra moment came when she heard jazz pianist Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight. “I was just, like: ‘What is that?’” With his dramatic but restrained style, Monk was one of jazz’s true greats – a misunderstood genius rejected by the US Army, beaten and harassed by police and beset by mental health problems. ‘Round Midnight, composed early in his career, channelled his pain and solitude into one of the most-recorded jazz standards by a single artist. Amy kept the track close to her heart and eventually recorded her own smoky version as the B-side to her second single, 2003’s Take the Box. Monk’s Straight, No Chaser featured prominently in the Amy biopic, Back to Black.

Unchain My Heart (1961)

Ray Charles

“I’d rather be at home with Ray / I ain’t got 70 days / ‘Cause there’s nothing, there’s nothing you can teach me / That I can’t learn from Mr Hathaway.” It’s a line any self-respecting music fan knows, taken from one of Amy’s most defining moments, Rehab. It tells us all we need to know about who her heroes of soul were: Donny Hathaway and, of course, Ray Charles. The latter was an obsession for Amy. After hearing his R&B-into-southern-soul classic Unchain My Heart in her brother’s bedroom – complete with swaggering saxophone solos from David ‘Fathead’ Newman and defiant themes of romantic emancipation – she was dumbstruck. “He looked at me as if I was about to go, ‘Mum’s dead’ or something. He goes, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I went: ‘Who is this?’ He went: ‘It’s Ray Charles.’ Then I just listened to Ray Charles for three months, exclusively.” Amy would later cover Ray Charles’ songs, including Night Time Is the Right Time, on tour.

Doo Wop (That Thing) (1998)

Lauryn Hill

As a straight-talking young woman, Amy found the strong female representation she was looking for in Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu – two artists embodying female empowerment for a new generation. “I’m not the only girl that feels blessed to have grown up in an age where we can have Lauryn Hill’s album and Erykah Badu’s albums… not only in an age where we can hear them, but in an age where I’m young and we can grow to those albums. We can shape our lives to those albums and how these women profile themselves as real women.” The impact of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill would stay with Amy, as she regularly performed a live mash-up of Doo Wop (That Thing) with Back to Black track He Can Only Hold Her. Remarkably, Doo Wop (That Thing), released in 1998, was the first US number one written, produced and recorded by a sole woman since Debbie Gibson’s 1989 track Lost in Your Eyes.

I Can Never Go Home Anymore (1965)

The Shangri-Las

Long before she wore a beehive, Amy would, according to her dad Mitch, scour Camden for records by 1960s girl groups, seeking out The Ronettes, The Shirelles, Martha and the Vandellas, The Crystals, The Dixie Cups. In the wake of Frank and the breakup of a relationship, the raw emotion and rebellious spirit of the groups appealed to her. And the girl gang that resonated more than any other was The Shangri-Las. She loved Leader of the Pack, of course, but it was I Can Never Go Home Anymore – “one of the saddest songs in the world” – she obsessed over. “I loved the drama, I love the atmosphere, I love the sound effects,” she said. “When me and my boyfriend finished, I used to listen to that song on repeat, just sitting on my kitchen floor with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

Made You Look (2002)

Nas

Amy loved hip-hop nearly as much as hip-hop loved her. She collaborated with Ghostface Killah and Mos Def. Jay-Z remixed Rehab, adding a fresh verse. And rumours abounded that she was planning to collaborate with Questlove of The Roots. But few rappers loomed larger in Amy’s life than Nas, the New York hip-hop giant who she shared a 14 September birthday with. Me & Mr. Jones is supposedly about missing a Slick Rick gig in Brixton because of him, and her track In My Bed, from Frank, sampled Nas’s Made You Look after a serendipitous moment when producer Salaam Remi looped the beats into the recording. “It was just crazy the way that worked and we kept it in because it felt so right.”

Monkey Man (1979)

The Specials

One of Amy’s favourite bands of all time were The Specials, the Coventry 2-Tone group fronted by Terry Hall. During sessions for Back to Black, Amy recorded covers of Monkey Man, Hey Little Rich Girl and You’re Wondering Now, and would regularly perform A Message to You Rudy live. In 2009, a dream came true for Amy when, after pestering Hall at the side of the stage at V Festival, the band relented and allowed her to join them to perform You’re Wondering Now and Ghost Town to end their set. Said The Specials’ bassist Horace Panter: “Nobody knew anything about it until it actually happened and she was fantastic… That got nine million views on whatever by the following weekend.”

Body and Soul (1989)

Tony Bennett

Written in 1930 for the British actor and singer Gertrude Lawrence, Body and Soul is one of the most-recorded standards in jazz history, covered by Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett – twice. First in 1989, and then, in 2011, with Amy Winehouse. Having grown up with the sound of Tony Bennett’s voice, the opportunity to work with one of her heroes was, for Amy, a greater validation than fame or awards. “It’s a song I always sang when Amy was a child,” her dad said. “When it was mooted that Amy would be doing a duet with Tony, she came back with six possible songs they could record. ‘I’ve chosen Body and Soul,’ Amy told me… ‘Do you even know the words?’ ‘Dad, you’ve been singing it to me for 25 years, of course I know the words.’”

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Charles Moriarty had just left university and was dabbling in photography while weighing up his options when a mutual friend asked him to turn his lens on an emerging young singer named Amy Winehouse. One of the images from that low-key ‘test shoot’ around east London – which captures Amy making friends with two black terriers – would go on to become the cover artwork for her 2003 debut album, Frank. We spoke to Charles about meeting Amy for the first time, and about working and hanging out with her long before the rest of the world knew she even existed.

You worked with Amy right at the start.

We were babies. She was 19 and I was 21, and neither of us had a clue what we were doing. So it was a nice little mash-up of naivety and a shared desire to get things done somehow.

How did that first shoot with Amy come about?

I suspect certain people within the label were a touch miffed at the time. But I was connected to Amy via Tyler James, who was a good old friend of hers from Sylvia Young. Tyler basically said, “Look, I’ve got a friend, she’s a singer and you’ve got a camera. Can you just take a roll of photos as a test for the label so they can see what Amy wants?” I was like, “Sure, no problem.” And so we made a date. Amy came round to my place in Spitalfields, and we just sat there and talked about what was missing and why she didn’t like other pictures of her. She put on some demos, and I got to listen to her music and try and understand what her vibe was. The thing she was really looking for was authenticity, and so I was trying very quickly to find out, well, who the f**k is Amy authentically, so that I could try and capture that. But we did what we could in a very short window, saying hello and then just putting trust in the experience. We went out with a roll of film at golden hour, around Spitalfields and Brick Lane, up to Old Street where she was recording – I think it was Vyner Street Studios – and finished with some photos on the roof. And at the end of the day, I gave Amy the roll of film. I didn’t think much of it until [Amy’s manager] Nick Shymansky called me a couple of weeks later, and was like, “Amy wants this picture for the cover.” I was like, “OK, that’s wild.”

That sounds very Amy-like.

I think she saw the picture and was like, “Yeah, that’s who I am, that’s how I would like people to see me.” The album cover is so important for the debut album. It’s basically how everyone is going to get to know you first off, alongside the music. We were meant to shoot the inlay too, but our dates didn’t match and so we ended up just shooting a whole load of stuff in New York, which I released as part of the Before Frank book. Everything went wrong. There was a massive storm in the middle of July, and all the locations were outside, but we really didn’t have anything to lose. I wouldn’t have called myself a photographer at the time – I was just a guy with a camera. I’d come from a film and art history background, and I loved visuals in general, so I was leaning as much as I could on what I had in my locker, and on Amy being Amy, which she always was.

What was your first impression of her?

Very straight-up, didn’t really do bullshit. If she felt a certain way, she’d let you know. But also, just very nice – intelligent and kind. She had a good heart about her. Immediately, we were just able to go straight into chat, she was so open. We just very easily fell into step with each other. When we went out with the camera in London, the first ten shots are me being like, “Oh God, what am I doing?”, and they do feel a bit basic, like NME girl-with-guitar. There are some great shots of her with the guitar, but once the situation with the dogs happened, which is the picture on the cover, everything gelled in this beautiful moment. I think that was maybe the 12th shot or so, down on Princelet Street. We only took 36 frames, or something like that. I was really learning on the fly.

Did she have an air of mischief about her?

Totally, she could be quite naughty when she wanted, in the nicest way possible. She was quite cheeky. She had that sort of naughty glint in her eye, which I totally understand, because I have that too. But yeah, she was a lot of fun. She was also excellent at swearing.

Was there ever a sense of you trying to out-do or out-perform each other?

Not really. I remember being back at Amy’s, having drinks and watching an old Paul Newman movie, Sweet Bird of Youth, because we both fancied Paul. So that was handy. And we just got to know each other a little bit. And the same in New York, you know? It was so typical of a photographer who wasn’t a photographer – we bounced around downtown New York all day, and I didn’t take a single picture because in my head I was waiting for the actual event to happen, which would be later. In hindsight, I should’ve had the camera with me all day. But Amy did hate the camera. She was camera shy and insecure, like all of us are when we’re in our late teens and early twenties – we’re not fans of the camera, because we’re not fans of ourselves. We’re still getting into our own skin.

What else did you learn about Amy, aside from having a mutual fancying of Paul Newman?

Amy had the box set of Sex in the City, obviously, which is one of the reasons she loved Patricia Field so much. When we were in New York, the first stop was the Patricia Field store, hanging out with all the drag queens. After shopping and location scouting, we went uptown to get ready to go out, and because she had just been recording, she had all these demos. She was playing me different CDs and backing tracks and was like, “What do you think of this?” And then, we’d get into the music. She was hugely into jazz. I remember talking to Sam, her piano player, and he was like, “If you don’t know who Thelonious Monk is, she doesn’t want to know you.” She had such a varied taste. One moment it would be Sarah Vaughan, and then it would be the Beastie Boys. I remember being in Amy’s duplex one day in Camden. I’m sitting downstairs, and Amy’s gone for a bath, and the music is playing so loud – there’s soapy water coming down the wall through a crack, and at any moment Amy’s bath is going to come through the ceiling. I think her varied music taste comes from where she grew up, and how she grew up, being in a musical household.

The photos from the New York shoot are very different to those shot in London.

People see the photos in New York and they get confused, because they’re like, “This looks like Back to Black.” She’s got the beehive up. The look that she has is very much what she ended up with at the end of the second album; she’s working with a 1960s aesthetic. It was just for that shoot, then she went back to London and carried it on. I got very lucky, I think, in that we hadn’t planned for her to have a beehive until everything went wrong. Then, the next day, I was like, we still need to shoot more. And so she did the beehive, she put on the dress and the earrings, and I was like, amazing. She clearly already had this idea of her aesthetic, but I guess at 19 it’s still very hard to realise that and understand how that might reflect your music. And then, of course, she went and made an album that was reflective of 1960s girl groups and it fits perfectly.

Do you feel fortunate to have worked with Amy during that carefree time?

I got to shoot her when it didn’t mean anything. It was just a couple of kids having fun, you know? A lot of those images, particularly the ones from New York, really did sit in a drawer for ten years, mainly because I was so upset that everything had kind of gone wrong on the New York shoot. I had to put my disappointment in the bin and look at them a lot more objectively. And after Amy passed, there was a lot more need for them, I felt. I wanted to give people something else to connect with, to remember her how I did.

How did working with Amy change you?

I had just come out of university, and my plan was to go into film production, and she really was the reason that I swerved left and took a different direction. I was always a bit socially anxious, and so the camera was kind of like a barrier or shield, so to speak. So when it became something I could do for a living, that I could earn money from, I jumped on it. I’m forever thankful for the moment I got and that we were able to make that test and that album cover; it’s a very special thing for me.

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Share Amy Winehouse: A Legacy in Words

Music is littered with epoch-defining moments that changed the course of history: Dylan going electric; the Sex Pistols calling Bill Grundy a “f***ing rotter” on live TV; Tony Iommi losing part of his fingers in a factory accident, altering his guitar technique and inadvertently creating the sound of heavy metal. In the modern era, though, few encounters carry the same weight as Amy Winehouse meeting Mark Ronson.

At the time, the British-born, New York-based producer had one well-received album and a minor hit to his name – the old-school hip-pop banger Ooh Wee, featuring Ghostface Killah – but was still better known as a loveable hipster DJ, kicking about a scene that, 20 years later, would be dubbed indie sleaze. Meeting Amy Winehouse changed all of that. As he told BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life:

“She is the main reason anybody knows my name.”

At the time of their meeting, Ronson was holed up in his Mercer Street studio in New York, working on his album Versions with the Dap-Kings – the retro funk-and-soul band who would go on to play their own role in the Back to Black story. One especially perceptive A&R phoned to say Amy was in town and would he like to meet her.

“I wasn’t a big name at all; I would meet with anyone,” Ronson later said in an onstage interview for Billboard.

Already a fan of Amy’s 2003 debut album Frank, he agreed, and a time was set for the next day. Ronson recalled that slightly awkward but fateful first meeting when accepting his Outstanding Contribution to Music Award at the 2026 Brit Awards.

“I realised on the way here that on Thursday, March 6, it’ll be 20 years to the day that Amy Winehouse came up to my studio in New York City,” he told the crowd at Manchester’s Co-Op Live. “She came up to the steps, and she said, ‘I’m here to meet Mark Ronson.’ And I said, ‘That’s me.’ She goes, ‘I thought you were an old guy with a beard.’ Now I am an old guy.”

Everything about that first encounter is perfect. Amy, expecting “some old Jewish guy” or a Rick Rubin-like character, and Ronson, glimpsing her for the first time, which he recalled on This Cultural Life:

“She had the hair and the 50s look already, the ballet slippers…”

“I liked her so much right away,” he continued. “We sat down, and I said, ‘What do you want your record to sound like?’ And she said, ‘Well, they play this record down at my local, the Good Mixer.’ And she played me some music by The Shangri-Las.”

The Flamingos and the Drifters were also on rotation that day, a reflection of the 1950s and 1960s doo-wop, soul and rebel-girl pop that Amy had immersed herself in over the previous year. Amy knew exactly how she wanted this new record to sound, and Ronson was already working with the band that could make that wall-of-sound, modern backbeat soul a reality. But where to begin when you’ve only just met?

“In that era, you would usually have some tracks ready to play a singer,” Ronson told the BBC. “But I was like, ‘I’ve never done that, but if you go back to the hotel and come back tomorrow, I’ll try some ideas tonight.’ So I came up with the piano that became Back to Black, and a little bit of the percussion track. She heard it and she loved it, and wrote the lyrics in maybe an hour. I burned the instrumental onto a CD, gave her a Discman, and she went into the back room of my studio with headphones and came out an hour later with the lyrics and melody.”

Amy later admitted she was initially sceptical about working with Ronson, only travelling to New York to avoid going to rehab – but she was immediately won over.

“The cool thing about working with Mark is that we have similar interests,” she told Toronto’s Now Magazine. “If things weren’t happening in the studio, I’d say, ‘Let’s get drunk and shoot some pool,’ and off we’d go… One day, on the way back from the pool room, I started singing to myself about rehab as a joke, and Mark asked, ‘Who does that song?’ I’m like, ‘What song? I just made it up.’ So Mark gets all excited, like, ‘That’s so cool, you should write a song around that!’ So I said, ‘A song about not going to rehab? That’s stupid. But it’s a true story so I could come up with something, no problem.’”

The pair struck up a friendship that went beyond creative collaboration, with Ronson regularly inviting Amy to sit in on his East Village Radio show, Authentic Shit.

“She’d eventually get bored and then go next door to the tattoo parlour,” Ronson told Fader.

In May 2006, just a few months after meeting, Ronson brought some of the early Back to Black demos he and Amy had been working on to play on his show. He knew he had something special on his hands.

“I had never really made a hit record before,” he told the BBC. “It didn’t sound like anything else on the radio. It certainly didn’t seem like something that was going to be a huge commercial success. It just felt raw and honest.”

The rest, of course, is history. From that slightly awkward first encounter on a New York stoop, careers were transformed. Ronson acknowledged as much in his recent acceptance speech at the 2026 Brit Awards, where he performed a tribute to Amy with the band he had been recording with when they met – the group that would become the Back to Black house band, the Dap-Kings.

“Artists like Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Queens, Raye… the list goes on,” he said. “But I know the music I made with Amy is the reason any of them know who I am anyway, so that’s why I’ll always treasure her voice, her talent, our bond, all of it.”

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Iconic images of Amy Winehouse are not exactly hard to come by. There she is, skipping across the Pyramid Stage during her victory lap at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival; striding through Camden in her everyday uniform of halter top, micro-shorts and leather jacket; or performing with her hero Tony Bennett. But one moment, more than any other perhaps, captures a star claiming her throne: the 2007 Brit Awards.

It wasn’t Amy’s first brush with the Brits, or with the performing arts school and trust behind the annual awards ceremony. Before the heartbreak, the beehive and the backbeat-driven rebel-soul influences of Motown, The Shangri-Las and The Ronettes, Amy was the voice of Frank – her 2003 jazz-meets-hip-hop debut inspired by Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Missy Elliott and Thelonious Monk. Nominated twice at the 2004 Brits, Amy’s red-carpet appearance that year gave us an early glimpse of the cheeky, f**k-you attitude that had seen her drop out of the Brit School and get expelled from the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and which would later light a fire under so many young women artists. Arriving late, Amy’s priority was clear:

“I don’t want to miss Beyoncé!”

Despite Frank’s success, Amy was always ambivalent about the album and how she was portrayed as a singer. In its wake, she edged away from the spotlight, played pool, fell in love, immersed herself in 1960s music – and then she met Mark Ronson.

“After Frank, I didn’t write for 18 months, but when I met Mark, I pretty much wrote the album [Back to Black] in six months – he was so inspiring,” she said.

Mark was equally taken with Amy:

“She looks f**king cool, and she’s brutally honest in her songs. It’s been so long since anybody in the pop world has come out and admitted their flaws, because everyone’s trying so hard to project perfection… She’s not into self-infatuation and she doesn’t chase fame,” he told Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu.

By the time the 2007 Brit Awards rolled around, Amy’s life looked very different. Back to Black had been out for just under four months, and its wildfire impact was beginning to ignite. It reached Number One in the UK for the first time in mid-January, and that year’s awards ceremony felt like a coronation of sorts. Even on a night of headline-grabbing controversy, bad-taste jokes and performances by Oasis, Take That, The Killers and Scissor Sisters, it was all about Amy: a stage-stealing appearance in front of 5.43 million TV viewers that would propel her on to front pages everywhere. And of course, she was always going to do it her own way.

First, there was the look – one of the Brits’ most memorable. Without the assistance of a stylist, Amy arrived in a get-up all of her own pulling together: a black lace bra peeping out of a bold, primary-coloured dress; a red, heart-shaped Moschino handbag for Valentine’s Day. Her beehive hair rose taller, her tattoos multiplied, her winged Cleopatra eyeliner flicked more audaciously.

“Amy was very much the architect of her image,” her eventual stylist, Naomi Parry, would later say.

The acid-yellow minidress she wore that night, designed for Preen by Thornton Bregazzi, had its own underdog story. The “short and sculptural” design – a stretch-elastane base layer draped in satin – was described by The Guardian as “sexy, cool and understated”: a contemporary party dress that somehow suited Amy’s throwback sensibility to perfection. Yet, like Back to Black, its iconic status was not immediately registered. Created a few months earlier, only a handful of shops felt confident they could shift the Power Dress’s figure-hugging cut. Then Kate Moss wore it. Then Amy – and it became a smash. Amy would go on to buy half the collection.

Then there was her performance. Changing into a black Armani Privé dress with ruffled skirt lifted from the label’s archives, Amy looked every inch a star of the classic era, bringing to the stage all the guilt, grief, heartache and vulnerability that had first caught Mark Ronson’s attention in the spring of 2006. Backed by a sharp-suited band who might have time-warped in from a 1960s Motown tour, she delivered a knockout rendition of Rehab – a song Mark Ronson had encouraged her to turn from a personal in-joke into a soul-pop behemoth. Poised, assured, almost furious in her embodiment of the song’s defiance, it was, by some distance, the night’s defining moment.

Amy’s award for Best British Female Artist that night kicked off 18 months that would mean heavy work for her mantlepiece. Between 2007 and 2008 she would sweep up at the Ivor Novello Awards – winning Best Contemporary Song for Rehab in 2007, and Best Song Musically and Lyrically for Love Is a Losing Game in 2008 – before a record-breaking smash-and-grab at the 2008 Grammys, where she won five awards and kickstarted a third British invasion, paving the way for young British singers including Adele, Lily Allen and Estelle.

She returned to the 2008 Brit Awards as a global phenomenon. With headlines trailing her, Amy’s performances were a reminder of what she could do. Repurposing a Dolce & Gabbana leopard-print pencil skirt into a miniskirt, she joined her Back to Black producer Mark Ronson for an upbeat, horn-soaked blast through Valerie – their cover of The Zutons song named after a Florida makeup artist going through a rough patch. She also sang Love Is a Losing Game, in what felt like a bittersweet look back over a whirlwind two years.

Despite all the awards and headlines, Amy was always very clear about her motivations.

“I don’t write songs because I want my voice to be heard because I want to be famous… I write songs about things I have problems with and need to get past, and I need to make something good out of something bad,” she said in one interview.

And yet, such was the impact of her appearance at the 2007 Brit Awards, it was this version of her – smiling, vibrant, unapologetic – that would later be immortalised as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds. That yellow dress, meanwhile, would take centre stage in the Design Museum’s 2021 exhibition, Amy: Beyond the Stage: a snapshot of the night she took the crown.

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