Amy Winehouse never really rated herself as a guitarist – she once claimed to be barely adequate – but for many, watching her play and sing at the same time was a magical experience.
This is something she did less as her career developed, which makes it all the more pleasing to see the newly released footage of Winehouse accompanying herself on acoustic guitar as she sings You Know I’m No Good, the second track on her classic 2006 album, Back to Black.
This sounds markedly different from the finished song, suggesting that, at the time the clip was recorded, it was still at a fairly early stage.
The video is appearing first on Spotify, and the streaming giant has confirmed that it was captured at Metropolis Studios in London before the studio demos that appear on the new Back to Black 20th Anniversary Edition were recorded.
This and two other performance videos of Back to Black songs (Rehab and Love Is A Losing Game) have been unearthed from a 2006 electronic press kit, and have never previously been released.
Speaking in 2004 as she was in the midst of promoting her first album, Frank, Winehouse explained that her idiosyncratic guitar playing style stemmed from the fact that she was self-taught.
“People say to me all the time, ‘how come you taught yourself?’” she revealed. “And there's things people can always show you - but the truth is, if you learn how to play guitar off someone, you just kind of learn to play it like them, you know what I mean? And that's why I can say that, while I'm not even probably an adequate guitarist, I'm still always a distinctive guitarist, you know. I sound different.”
One person who was definitely impressed was the Libertines’ Pete Doherty, who spoke to MusicRadar about WInehouse’s playing in 2024. “I’ve actually sat in a room with her and a guitar,” he recalled. “Watching those tiny hands finding all these weird jazz chords. And her strumming patterns... crazy, off-kilter timings. She made it look so effortless.”
