AMy Winehouse - Frank

By Enya Xiang

Nineteen years have passed since nineteen-year-old Amy Winehouse released her debut album, Frank. Named after Frank Sinatra, this lesser-known album finds Winehouse as an opinionated young woman with a liking for flirting and going out, often falling in love with the wrong men. Through razor-sharp lyrics and stripped-back acoustics, her smoky contralto shines through and pays tribute to her vocal heroes by blending jazz, blues, and soul into a sound that remains as fresh now as it was when it was first released. 

Wistful and optimistic, Frank differs strikingly from her second album, Black to Black, the harrowing collection defining Winehouse’s signature sombre sound. It’s hard to imagine the two albums from the same artist with big beehive hair and exaggerated black eyeliner. Perhaps that is why she revealed in a Guardian interview, “I’ve never heard the album [Frank] from start to finish. I don’t have it in my house.” Despite Winehouse’s apathy for the album, Frank stands on its own as an extraordinary work of art, defined by old-soul sentiments and modern storytelling. It’s Winehouse happy, laced with regret and insecurity, captured delicately in an album foretelling her inevitable rise to fame.

Frank begins with playful scatting and quickly shifts into a commanding drumbeat in the single, ‘Stronger than Me.’ With a confident and unexpectedly cool attitude, Winehouse implores her partner, seven years older than her, to grow up and act like a man. She mercilessly declares, “Cause I've forgotten all of young love's joy / Feel like a lady and you my ladyboy.” In its time, her scathing lyrics sparked controversy for projecting regressive gender views, and two decades later, it’s certainly still uncomfortable to hear this language. However, Winehouse doesn’t pretend to be a good person. She confides in us her frustrations, and we are meant to accept her decisions, whether good or bad.

Frank exposes the ugly sides of womanhood, when femininity can become cunning and conniving. In the mischievous track, ‘F--k Me Pumps,’ Winehouse teases a woman ten years her senior and dismantles her unsuccessful routine to pick up men which, of course, includes seductive shoes. She viciously jokes, ‘You should have known from the jump / That you’d always get dumped.’ In ‘Amy Amy Amy,’ the roles reverse because this time, Winehouse plays the calculating femme fatale seeking male attention. The echoing vocal triad of “Amy” warns her like an angel on her shoulder as she admits, “He makes me imagine it from bad to worse.”

My personal favourite track from the album is ‘You Sent Me Flying / Cherry,’ a two-part track about a failing relationship, which truly highlights Winehouse’s vocal creativity. Her smooth jazzy voice, accompanied by stripped-back piano, picks up midway with a catchy, simple drum rhythm. The track morphs into ‘Cherry,’ a sweet 50s-style ballad to her best friend. She addresses the same boyfriend in ‘You Sent Me Flying,’ claiming that “We’ve just met / But already she knows me better than you.” Her lyrics fluctuate to a higher octave, using a soft head voice which is never found in Black to Black. We see an authenticity to Frank, in which a younger Winehouse experiments with genre and technique. With the final lyric, the song reveals that the friend is her brand-new guitar. 

The album is not entirely downcast; a bubbly optimism surfaces when reminiscing on her first love in Frank. Winehouse covers the 1963 ‘(There Is) No Greater Love’ by Isham Jones (famously covered by Sinatra), leaning closely into the soft 50’s flair of Billie Holiday or Nina Simone and accompanied by a romantic saxophone and flute arrangement. In ‘October Song,’ Winehouse sings with a childlike, dreamy gentleness as a eulogy to her pet canary, Ava.

However, Frank still clues into the coming sorrow and heartbreak, explored to its depths in her next album, the Shakespearean tragedy that is Back to Black. In Frank, Winehouse covers James Moody’s 1998 ‘Moody’s Mood For Love,’ but her deep voice darkens the love song with doubts of unrequited love. The hidden track, ‘Mr Magic (Through the Smoke),’uses the original 1974 saxophone piece by Grover Washington, Jr. and touches on early stages of substance abuse, which become second nature in Back to Black. Although lighthearted and hopeful, Winehouse uncovers a buried sadness in her first album that amplifies in the next. 

Indeed, Frank understands the volatile human mind. Winehouse captures the emotional extremes of joy transforming into sorrow and affection into indifference. With her textured voice, instantly recognisable, Winehouse remains true to the human experience.