What you’re not taking into account is that every album Jimi released during his lifetime (plus a couple of the posthumous ones) made the Top 10. He was one of the first big album artists in rock, so his career was never geared towards the singles charts. (Compare Led Zeppelin, who had exactly one Top 10 single, and whose best-known song wasn’t even a single at all.) Defining “one-hit wonder” in such a narrow way that someone as wildly popular as Jimi Hendrix would qualify is just silly.
As someone who has seen many, many picture of Amy Winehouse over the last couple years (I get bored at work, and Perez Hilton updates frequently), I can safely say that the “after” pictures of Winehouse on that blog aren’t even the worst pictures of her out there. Winehouse is lucky if she’s recognizably human in most photos of her nowadays; her body looks practically deformed, she suffered from at least one temporarily disfiguring skin disease, and her hair and teeth are falling out. It’s rare that she has the presence of mind to dress herself in anything but a bra and miniskirt. What’s even worse than all that is that she insists on parading herself in front of the British media on a daily basis, so we’re privy to every disgusting thing she and her drug-addled pals like Pete Doherty do.
I can’t say as much about the “before” pics, but everything I’ve seen of Winehouse before her spiral into extreme drug use indicates that she used to be pretty cute. She was pretty in a sort of quirky way, had a nice, curvy body, and long, healthy-looking hair.
She didn’t even look that bad when she made it big here with “Rehab.” I didn’t care for the beehive or the tattoos, but she didn’t look like she was courting death with every step. It’s only been in the last 9 months or so that she’s turned into the walking dead.
I’m surprised nobody has made an anti-drug PSA using images of her yet.
Exactly. The general definition of a one hit wonder is an artist who had exactly one hit and was never heard from again. Hendrix is arguably the most influential rock guitarist ever. Any definition of “one hit wonder” that includes him is fatally flawed.
I agree. Again, I said it “could be said,” not that it was true.
What couldn’t be said? Seriously. Is there anything that couldn’t be said? “It could be said” is usually seen as advocating a particular position.
It could be said that Jimi Hendrix was an alien.
It could be said that parakeets rule the world.
It could be said that yada yada yada.
Why start a sentence with “It could be said” when literally anything that follows is as valid as anything else?
AAAAAAHHH!
AAAAAAHHH!
AAAAAAHHH!
Holy crap that was scary. That’s almost as bad as the maggot boob picture.
I’m quite bored with A. Winehouse stories. The least she could do is have comparable talent to her media exposure, which, regardless of how great a singer she is, is way out of whack.
Seriously, Britain. Stop covering losers like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse. To date I haven’t heard the music of either one of these people outside of the one or two hits… I’d rather see a spate of front-page articles on Keane.
oh wait, no I wouldn’t.
The original question was whether she becomes a legend if she’s dead in, say, a year, right? I think the answer is that it’s a different time. On the one hand, the entertainment industry works to generate nostalgia almost instantly, but people take a different attitude toward stars. They’re torn down fast and I don’t think the idea of unassailable icons - as Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and others are generally held to be, whatever one may think of their various merits - really exists anymore.
If it weren’t for her living the tabloid targeted high-end low life at the springhead of trauma drama, I’d have no idea who the heck Amy Winehouse even was!
Seriously, for the longest time I was aware of her only as “that funny-looking English chick who’s always in trouble in the papers” like Anna Nicole Whatsherprob and Whitney and Litany and Zitney Creem and Brittaney Spaniel and that goofy zillionaire girl with the little dog and the underpants or whatever.
Finally, I twigged that not only was Amy W a one-woman walking carnival for schaudenfreude hobbyists, she was also the Huge Pop Thing of the moment. And, apparently, there was some connection between those two things.
So I sought out, and listened to, a few of her songs, thinking “she might be pretty good, if she’s such a big ol’ doped-up nut-girl with all that prurient press cover and all”. After about five minutes of that, I knew that if she hadn’t been in the jaundice-journals all messed up, all the time, she’d never have even registered on my awareness.
I’ll quote your whole post, and perhaps just highlight this bit
and contrast it with this bit:
Hypocrite, much?
Worse for her. Obviously I don’t mind watching her rapid slide into zombie-dom.
Well, if being subjected to a crowd of paparazzi outside your house 24/7 is “parading”, then sure. I suspect she’d quite like to smoke her crack in private, myself. I know they’re there 24/7 because she lives just down the road from me, and a friend of mine who works in sleb magazines had to tag along with some of the paparazzi stationed there for a bit. Ironically, they declined to be photographed (even socially) in quite vehement terms.
No doubt she’s being watched like a caged animal, but the paparazzi isn’t forcing her to do things like stumble outside dressed only in her bra, or to make cracked-out videos of herself with Pete Doherty and post them on the internet.
Yikes. What the heck is wrong with her face and leg?
It seems entirely unreasonable to lay siege to someone with a drug problem, then tut and say, “exhibitionist!” when they do something weird. Of course they’re acting weird; they’re fucked up. It doesn’t mean they want you to see it. Yeah, the YouTube thing was odd. Maybe they just thought it’d be funny. Who knows, and frankly who cares? The point is that it’s pretty hypocritical for someone who voraciously consumes this celebrity nonsense to then attack the unfortunates who are being forced to provide it. Smacks of the old, “she was dressed provocatively, so she was asking for it,” defence.
I got locked outside my house in my dressing gown yesterday morning. I would’ve looked a right charlie had there been a phalanx of photogs hiding in the bushes. I’d hardly even taken any drugs at that point.
I don’t really see what one thing has to do with the other. I’m saying that Winehouse is making it worse for herself by her actions. Obviously I’m not saying, “Winehouse should stop acting like she was raised by wolves so that I don’t have to read about her anymore,” since that wouldn’t make any sense.
I’m not attacking her so much as pointing out the obvious - that it would probably better for her if there weren’t so many pictures out there in which she resembled Swamp Thing, and that her behavior is at least partially the cause of that.
I suppose whether she can be held accountable for her own actions is up for speculation at this point.
Pink eye?
I didn’t even know legs could do that! What a mess.
Her body is royally fucked up. Looks like she’s seriously malnourished or something.
Regarding her skin - Amy had impetigo a while ago.
How long will it be until somebody uses “Rehab” in a commercial? I imagine a tagline like “if Amy had gone to rehab this wouldn’t be her today” under some of those god awful photos.
Man. She makes Courtney Love look like the spokesperson for a healthfood store.
My point is that you’re creating the demand that means she can’t possibly avoid exposing herself, so accusing her of making things worse for herself is at best meaningless, since she can’t get any more watched than she already is, and at worst astoundingly hypocritical, because you’re the one that chooses to take a prurient interest in her actions; she did not choose to display them to you other than by happening to exist in the same world as omnipresent photographers.
This was my point about my little dressing-gown excursion yesterday morning. If you’re being watched 24/7, it’s pretty much impossible to avoid looking stupid at some stage, even if you don’t have personal problems (I don’t think I have personal problems :)). So blaming her for perpetuating her media presence is very much a case of blaming the victim; as you seem to acknowledge, it’s unfair to expect someone this troubled to respond rationally to such an exceptionally weird intrusion on their life. How would you or I deal with it? I have no idea, but I’ve got to think it’d be fucking nasty, even for a perfectly happy individual.
You stop reading, they’ll stop snapping, she’ll stop having to live through a siege and maybe she’ll stand a chance of getting better. Alternatively, say she’s asking for it. Well, if it makes you feel better, I suppose.