It’s 20 years since Amy Winehouse released her masterpiece Back to Black and 15 since she died at a frighteningly young age. A good way to appreciate how special she was is to watch the Amy Winehouse Band trot through a few lesser songs and cover versions and spot what’s missing: her playfulness, bite, anarchic charisma and taste. Winehouse mixed soul, jazz, hip-hop, two-tone and 60s girl groups because she loved that music more than anything. Without her animating fandom, a cover of Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals is just a cover of Monkey Man by Toots and the Maytals; for all her old band’s precision and gusto, it has no pressing reason to exist.
The main event, in which Back to Black producers including Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi hand-pick singers such as Jorja Smith, Lianne La Havas and Corinne Bailey Rae to recreate the album, is stronger except that it’s primarily staged for a BBC TV show, which means the flow is broken by onstage interviews and hagiographical patter from Jo Whiley. It’s a little grating to be constantly told that a concert is amazing even as it unfolds, but that’s TV for you.
