I seem to have written about nothing but Amy and Spotify for days now. The past and the future.
Amy is important not just because you brought jazz swing to r&b, and not just she has one of the great voices of her generation. She did both, she has both, they were her calling card.
But she is so important, the reason Elton John is right when he calls Winehouse seminal, because she changed the language of the American Standard. From "Fuck Me Shoes" to "Frank" to her epitaph "rehab" she used language in ways that the songbook wasn't used to.
Amy wasn't a tough gal -I mean, obviously, but even theoretically, but she was a wiseass, a smartie pants, flippant and stroppy, and battling against her pain with every song.
The tough gal, modern English language (in that sense a relation to Faithfull's "Modern English" , who used the language of today to convey ache and breaks.
And many, many English girls embraced the post-pre-modern Amy and she spearheaded a movement ongoing but never to equal the great one.