Amy Winehouse remembered on her birthday as icon who died aged 27 would have been 35 today
Today marks what would have been Amy's 35th birthday - seven years on from her death aged just 27
AMY Winehouse is remembered as the best singer-songwriter of her generation lost tragically too soon to drink and drugs.
Today would have been her 35th birthday and to celebrate we look back at her journey to super-stardom.
Amy won five Grammys, three Ivor Novellos and a Brit for Best Female by the time she was 26.
But while the singer enjoyed the trappings of success and the pitfalls of fame at a young age – she started off in modest surroundings.
Amy Jade Winehouse was born in 1983 and grew up in the north London suburb of Southgate in a family home buzzing with music.
Her dad Mitch was a typically loud London taxi driver and her mum, softly-spoken Janis, worked as a pharmacist.
Showing a talent for song at a young age her family enrolled in a number of theatre schools and she eventually landed a cameo role in TV’s The Fast Show.
Amy would was a massive fan of the Rat Pack and would sing Sinatra and Dean Martin songs with her dad as he drove her to school.
But it was during her time studying at the Brit School that Amy started to follow her dream as a pop star.
Her one-time boyfriend Tyler James, who remained a close pal to her dying day, sent a demo tape she had recorded to label bosses.
Universal signed her up and released her debut album Frank through their subsidiary label Island, in 2003.
Inspired by the break-up of her first serious relationship, Frank was a huge achievement for a debut record at a time when young, talented British female solo artists were few and far between.
Amy was only 20 and the music was beyond her years. The lyrics were sharp – “I’ll take the wrong man as naturally as I sing” — and old-fashioned jazz got a fresh twist, which fans lapped up across the UK.
Frank was nominated for the Mercury Prize and reached No13 in the charts before re-entering the top 40 six times in the following four years.
The platinum-selling album earned Amy a nomination for Best British Female Solo Artist at the Brits and Best British Urban Act.
Later in 2004, she won a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song for the brilliant Stronger Than Me.
However, it was after this success that Amy started to become more a figure in the bars and pubs of Camden – where she would eventually meet her long-term boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil.
The pair would embark on a destructive and drug-fuelled relationship with Amy sinking into depression after their countless break ups.
But from this toxic and fraught love affair came the singer's most famous work – Back to Black.
It was released in 2006 and became one of the year’s biggest-selling records — shifting more than one million copies in 12 months. It was an album of heartbroken songs that won Amy a Mercury Award and wowed America.
In February 2007 she won a Brit Award for Best British Female.
But as her star rose - her commitment to Blake was sinking her deeper into a mire of drugs, alcohol and depression.
Despite family and loved ones pleading her to cut Blake out of her life – the couple got married in a £60 ceremony in Miami May, 2007.
It was after that the singer’s drug problems began to spiral and she was heckled at shows for forgetting her lyrics and stumbling across the stage.
Other gigs were pulled at short notice because she was too sick to appear.
Short unsuccessful stints in rehab followed and even Blake’s imprisonment didn’t break their bond.
But Amy eventually broke off their relationship and cleaned herself up with the divorce made final in August 2009.
She spent time in the Caribbean working on new material, with management hoping it would lead to a new album.
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She was clean of heroin and got her life back on track. But her real demons lay with booze and recording sessions turned into long days spent drinking rum cocktails.
Amy was supposed to make a big comeback in 2011 but her European tour was cancelled after a shambolic gig in Belgrade, Serbia, during June, where she was booed by the crowd.
She staggered on to perform an hour late and crawled across the stage plastered.
After years of battling addiction, she was found found dead just a month later in her home in Camden, North London, on July 23 2011 - aged just 27.
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