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Love Is A Losing Game recently won an Ivor Novello award

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While we’re used to Amy Winehouse regularly adorning the pages of several British tabloids, most of us would be surprised if the singer was ever discussed in a more academic sense – for example, in an English Literature exam.

“Surprise” was certainly one reaction to an exam question put to students at Cambridge University, who were recently asked to compare Winehouse’s lyrics to prose by Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday and 16^th century poet and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh.

The song in question was Love Is A Losing Game – co-written by Mark Ronson – and students were asked to compare the tune’s lyrics to words from As You Came From The Holy Land by Raleigh, Boots Of Spanish Leather by Dylan and Fine And Mellow by Holiday. 

Cambridgeis one of the UK’s most prestigious universities and it’s not known what today’s bright young literary thinkers made of Winehouse’s lyrics, but it’s unlikely she'd be particularly perturbed if the track was slated; the same song recently won her an Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically & Lyrically.

By Chris Wickett