Amy Winehouse – Back to Black 20 review: An affecting, all-star reminder of a generational talent

It’s shocking to think Amy Winehouse‘s Back to Black is now 20 years old – just as it’s shocking to realise the woman herself has been gone for over 15 years. “We’re in Amy’s house right now,” Mark Ronson tells us midway through this affecting tribute gig at the Roundhouse in Camden Town. Well, where else could you pay homage to the greatest artist of the mid-2000s than the London borough that she helped to make cool again? Stroll 10 minutes down the road and you’ll find The Good Mixer, the old-school boozer where Winehouse played pool while cuing up The Shangri-Las on the jukebox.

‘Back to Black’, Winehouse’s second and final studio album, was inspired by great 1960s girl-groups like The Shangri-Las, but also drew brilliantly from reggae, ska, neo-soul and R&B. Musically luminous and lyrically dazzling, it’s still the UK’s eleventh best-selling LP of all time. At this 20th anniversary celebration curated by its producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, the album is performed in full, though not in order, by Winehouse’s band and an all-female cast of guest vocalists. Ronson joins Corinne Bailey Rae for the opening number, playing the title track’s instantly recognisable piano riff as the Leeds diva delivers Winehouse’s anguished lyrics. Later, in an onstage interview with the BBC’s Jo Whiley, Bailey Rae points out the poetic quality in Winehouse stanzas like “And I tread a troubled track / my odds are stacked / I’ll go back to black.”

This sets the tone for a classy, heartfelt show where no one lets the side down vocally. R&B trio FLO add honeyed harmonies to ‘He Can Only Hold Her’, a smoky shuffle that already had a little girl-group in its DNA. Neo-soul singer Sasha Keable infuses the ska-flecked ‘Just Friends’ with salty grit, while Lianne La Havas recognises that Winehouse’s astonishing storytelling is what really drives the R&B banger ‘You Know I’m No Good’. When she delivers its killer line – “I cried for you on the kitchen floor” – it’s a lump-in-the-throat moment.

Rising stars Skye Newman and Nia Smith were just toddlers when ‘Back to Black’ came out, but their presence underlines the fact that Winehouse’s coruscatingly honest lyrics have now inspired successive generations of songwriters. Newman relishes the luxuriant melody of ‘Addicted’, a jazzy toe-tapper that closes ‘Back to Black’, and Smith’s committed rendition of ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’ gets Tom Grennan and everyone else in the crowd singing along. The album’s biggest hit, ‘Rehab’, is saved for last, when it’s sung with a suitably raucous rasp by Jessie Reyez.

Because tonight’s show is being taped for a BBC special, the music is broken up by onstage interviews that allow for quick staging changes. Whiley also introduces each song with Wikipedia-level insights that will probably work better on TV. The whole thing feels slicker than Winehouse ever was, but it’s still a fitting and tremendously entertaining tribute that ends with a rollicking group rendition of ‘Valerie’, which she recorded with Ronson a year after ‘Back to Black’ came out. It’s a reminder that Winehouse didn’t just make one of the greatest albums ever when she was in her early twenties. She also took an indie bop by The Zutons and turned it into a lost girl-group classic with a sapphic edge. We’ll still be talking about her extraordinary talent in another 20 years’ time.