I'm admittedly late onto the Amy Winehouse bandwagon, but I'm a fan. I like her voice, I like her style, and well... she's an appealing mess. Elton John has likened her to Nina Simone: when she's on, she's great, but when she's off she's way off. In my hunt through YouTube for Amy Winehouse videos, I came across a duet of hers... with Charlotte Church... singing Michael Jackson's Beat It.
This was the finale for "The Charlotte Church Show", and this is an example of where Amy Winehouse is off. Way off. Off rhythm, off beat, she's practically indecipherable. And everyone knows it. Charlotte's sidelong glances to Amy as she's singing are just fantastic. Couple this with Amy's deer-in-the-headlight expressions and Charlotte's Sandy-at-the-end-of-Grease outfit, and you have one fantastic train wreck.
You can just hear the director in the booth shouting "Oh, bloody hell, no close ups of Winehouse! My God, man, just focus on Charlotte! What... what is that crackwhore doing? Why is she standing there like a diseased birch tree? Shite, she just gave up, didn't she? Fuck. Cue the credits. Roll them... nnnnnnnnnnnnnow."
My friends and I have a gestural shorthand for WTF? which goes something like this: a slight widening of the eyes, like there could possibly have been a non-incapacitating brain aneurysm just at that moment, combined with an ever-so-slight raising of one eyebrow, all of the above delivered with a dead-on stare.
Everyone except Amy Winehouse in that clip was looking at each other with that very same WTF? stare. Awesome.
Posted by: bstewart23 | March 15, 2008 at 12:36 PM