We all have that one artist who can appropriately fill any silence in our lives. After a long emotionally challenging day when you've finally made it home to lay in your bed, exhausted, this is the voice you want crashing over you. Or maybe you're on top of the world, feeling the best you've felt in a really long time, this artist is the music to which you want to celebrate. Amy Winehouse is that person for me. I hesitate to call her a singer because she's more than that like so many are. When her music makes its way through my speakers during intense study sessions or my headphones late at night when all I want is to clear my mind, it's like my own personal form of therapy.

Amy writes from actual experiences so her music is not generic, cliche or predictable

"A lot of people, when I hear them sing, and I know I speak for a good few of us out there, they might as well be singing "please send money! please send money!" And with Amy Winehouse I feel like she's saying "this is my musical statement""
Amy Winehouse: The Legacy

There are multiple examples of interviews with Amy describing lyrics to her songs where she explains that the lyrics are exact quotes from real conversations that she's been apart of. Though like other artists, she did write in metaphors and paint pretty symbolic pictures, her music is so detailed and exact, that like she explains, if she didn't write what actually happens to her, she wouldn't have the words to fill up a song. Amy Winehouse is the only artist who I truly believe those words from. I have a hard time believing that anyone made her say or sing anything that she didn't want to just to make money.

Amy sings with all the passion that her lyrics suggest

"On the deluxe version, I think it is on Back To Black, she does an additional version of 'Love Is A Losing Game' and again she sings that with so much heart and so much soul and then when the song's finished she turns around at the end and there's a pause and you get to hear her say "is that alright?" . And you can see in that both her brilliance and her insecurity. She's just done something totally incredible, totally magical. She's done a rendition of this song that could move a stone statue to tears. She's really delivered this and then she says "is that alright?""
Amy Winehouse: The Legacy

How an artist could listen to someone like Amy Winehouse and go back to making music that means nothing to themselves personally, I would never understand. One thing that struck me when watching an interview of Amy, was how she always said that she wrote for herself. She would say that when she wrote about an event or a situation, that was her way of getting over it because once she'd made a song about it, it was over and she was done with it. Slightly different from musicians who make music for their fans (which there's nothing wrong with at all). This simple statement from her answered all of my questions as to how it always felt like she was talking directly to me, telling me a story when I listened to her.

On top of all this, her voice will knock you off of your feet. It's no exaggeration when I say that her voice has been known to slow my own heart rate when I'm anxious.

Amy's honesty is inspiring

The amount of artists who will make the first song on their album about being heartbroken and the second one about being completely over the same person they were heartbroken about in the first song is hysterical. Amy wrote whole albums, made whole projects, composed heartbreak anthems, not leaving anything out. If you're denying your feelings about something, I wouldn't listen to her music because by the end of one song, her own honesty will make you ashamed you couldn't be as honest with yourself as she is with the whole world.

Here's my point: Amy Winehouse no doubt had struggles that I never aspire to have. However, she is hands down the best example of raw talent that I can offer and I'm regretful that I missed her short-lived fame. Whenever I sit down to play the piano or the organ or to do anything that I claim to be passionate about, I want to have as honest a relationship with that art as Amy had with hers.