The recent death of pop singer Amy Winehouse, allegedly from her well-documented struggle with substance abuse, was yet another demonstration of popular culture’s fascination with the tragic deaths of young stars. Although there are examples of misfortune in every musical genre - including Latin jazz and salsa - rock and roll in particular appears almost to revel in an Artists’s complete and flaming self-destruction. Immediately, the media pointed out that Winehouse had joined Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and many others in the “27 Club” – a litany of rock stars who died at the ripe old age of twenty-seven.Already, the Winehouse legend is being re-written: today the story is the tragic death of a tormented artist at the peak of her powers. But just weeks ago, we observed a stumbling, wacked-out, and marginalized Winehouse being booed off of the stage in Serbia, at the start of her quickly-cancelled ‘comeback tour’. In truth, although bursting with a natural talent, her career was decidedly in decline. Had Winehouse not died tragically, had she merely limped along for another year or two of
