Some material on Amy Winehouse's posthumous album 'would probably never have seen the light of day had the artist lived', writes Alexis Petridi for The Guardian.
Alex Petridi, writing for The Guardian, says that: 'The compilers have clearly had to pull every trick in the posthumous album book in order to cobble together 45 minutes of music. There are early recordings that would probably never have seen the light of day had the artist lived.'
There are big-name special guests drafted in to bolster unfinished songs. Questlove of the Roots – a man fearless enough to consider forming a band with Winehouse a year before her death – plays on the beautiful 2003 out-take, Halftime. Nas adds a rap to Like Smoke, a track from her unfinished third album: "You know how me and Amy, we're straight playas," he can be heard on the album as saying; which seems an odd thing to say about a woman who tragically drank herself to death at the young age of just 27.
However, the singer's father insisted that her first posthumous LP would have not been released if the family did not think it was good enough. Speaking to the Evening Standard, he said: "The family view was nothing was going to go out unless it was comparable to Frank or Back To Black. If it wasn't as good as that then we wouldn't have allowed it to go out."
