Amy Winehouse
Lioness: Hidden Treasures

by: Christina Calloway on Dec 28 2011
High quality: Better than about 95% of other albums being released.
4.0
There are a lot of things you can do by the age of 27 and a lot of things you can't do. Fortunately for us, Amy Winehouse created some of the most influential British soul music in recent years. Credited with being the frontrunner of the second British invasion, Winehouse was able to transform the music that influenced her into contemporary pop classics. Her latest posthumous compilation Lioness: Hidden Treasures features new and old unreleased tracks from the fated singer and songwriter. The lead single is "Body and Soul" is a duet with the incomparable music industry standard Tony Bennett which doesn't feature Winehouse in her best voice but she still commands the track. Although half of the tracks on the album have been readily available for listeners to hear, Winehouse was able to take the same words and transform her tone and inflections to make the song sound new and fresh. It helps that she had such creative production forces as Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson backing her honest and vulnerable songwriting. The original version of "Tears Dry" (from 2007's Back To Black) is a soaring ballad and Winehouse is smoother and softer than the Ashford and Simpson-sampled version on her hit album. "Wake Up Alone" (also from Black) is more jazz than the original; Winehouse's voice is clearer making the lyrics more deliberate. For those who may have missed it, Winehouse loved hip hop and one of its best, "Like Smoke" features Nas. Winehouse recreates classics like "The Girl from Ipanema" and "A Song For You" into hipper, modern tracks for a new generation (her scatting on the former is a fresh perspective on the bossa nova song). Lioness: Hidden Treasures highlights the growth of Winehouse as an artist during her life and the reach beyond her passing. What she left in her music will carry on way past her years - Lioness: Hidden Treasures is living proof.
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