Amy Winehouse: Back to Black and the Gothic

Abstract

This article considers Amy Winehouse through the lens of the Female Gothic. With a specific focus on her song “Back to Black” (2007) and its accompanying video, an attempt is made to Gothicize the artist: to delineate an identity forged out of a variety of personalities and metaphors drawn from the Gothic. The various themes and tropes which emerge from this genre speak to a sense of continuity in terms of the structural constraints and anxieties that women face in society. To deploy the Gothic in relation to Amy Winehouse aims to give voice to gender related issues of power and autonomy. As part of the discussion I will foreground the significance of place in relation to both her narrative and music, by embracing a psychogeographic approach. This is to exploit a natural connection between Psychogeography and the Gothic by considering the possibility of darker currents and resonances via a relationship with the uncanny which they both share.