Music fans tend to be conflicted about posthumous releases from their favourite artists. On the one hand, everybody wants to hear everything they possibly can from an artist they love and the collector inside every music fan naturally wants the comprehensive discography.
However, there’s also the school of thought that reckons releasing a late artist’s demos or studio outtakes is simply a brazen cash-grab and a way for labels to capitalise on an artist’s legacy and reputation without any regard for what that artist would have wanted.
Well, David Joseph, chairman/CEO of Universal Music UK is determined not to have such exploitation happen with one of the label’s most iconic stars, Amy Winehouse. According to Rolling Stone, Joseph has even gone so far as to physically destroy recorded demos for the singer’s planned third LP.
“It was a moral thing,” the executive recently told Billboard. “Taking a stem or a vocal is not something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.” The singer had been working on a third album before she died from alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at age 27.
Winehouse’s friends, family, admirers, and collaborators recently spoke to Billboard for a feature on the singer’s tragic life and enduring musical legacy, timed to coincide with Asif Kapadia’s controversial new documentary, Amy, which is in cinemas now.
According to the profile, before her death, Winehouse had discussed forming a jazz/hip-hop supergroup with Roots drummer Questlove, Raphael Saadiq, and rapper Mos Def. She’d also reportedly “mapped out” her next solo album, a follow-up to 2006’s Back to Black.
She’d already booked studio time with Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, who helped her make her timeless sophomore effort. “She probably finished the writing process a few weeks before she passed,” said Remi. “As far as I could see, we had 14 songs. Whatever needed to happen, it was right there.”
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While Joseph is content to let Lioness: Hidden Treasures, a posthumous collection of unreleased songs and demos selected by Ronson, Remi, and Winehouse’s family, be the singer’s final statement, Remi allowed the Amy crew to use a recording of Winehouse reciting lyrics to an unreleased song titled ‘You Always Hurt the Ones You Love’.
Meanwhile, Ronson recounted the origins of Winehouse’s most iconic single, ‘Rehab’, for Billboard, saying it was inspired by an incident with the singer’s father, who told her she “absolutely [did] not” need to attend rehab for alcohol abuse.
Winehouse relayed the story to an amused Ronson, who encouraged her to write a song about the experience. The track was finished in just three hours. “If I’d known all the stuff that was going on, I don’t know if I would have thought it was so amusing,” said Ronson. “But she said it in such a light way.”
The profile also features an interview with superstar singer Sam Smith, who reflected on Winehouse’s influence on his own music. “Her song ‘You Sent Me Flying’ is the reason why I sing,” he said. “At 11 years old, I was belting out ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ and soaking in all the language and honesty.”
