Amy Winehouse wrote songs that cut to the core of heartbreak, and sang them in a voice as supple and sturdy as raw silk. In her short lifetime she earned millions of fans, a number that has only increased since her death from alcohol poisoning in 2011, at age 27. She’d long struggled with substance abuse and mental-health problems, and there’s evidence that those in her inner circle—people who stood to profit off her gifts—had failed her. No wonder those who love her feel protective of her even after death.
When the trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic dropped, Winehouse fans sprang into mother-bear mode. They claimed that the film looked cheesy, and that its star, Marisa Abela (from), who did her own singing, looked and sounded nothing like Winehouse. Worst of all, the film had been made with the cooperation of Winehouse’s father Mitch, the “daddy” who, in real life and in Winehouse’s megahit “Rehab,” had at one time deemed his daughter’s use of alcohol—the addiction that would eventually kill her—nothing to worry about. Why make a film about Amy Winehouse at all? the fans demanded. She’d suffered enough. Why not just let her rest?
