Event Reviews

They say honesty is the best policy. So Amy Winehouse gained a bit of respect at her rescheduled Summer Pops gig in saying: “Thanks for having me back after I bottled out.”

It was a semi-apology worth making though, seeing as the majority of the people sitting in front of her had made a wasted trip to the Aintree Pavilion two weeks previous, being told just minutes before the place opened that she was too exhausted to perform.

Dressed in a white top, the shortest of shorts and a pair of flat pumps, Amy looked anything but the jazz sensation that such an extravagant boudoir-esque set - with its huge red drapes and scattered red lampshades – would usually demand.

But this is Amy Winehouse. And you can tell that she’s her own boss.

Attire aside, you couldn’t help be astounded by the sheer power of her voice, which seemed to emanate effortlessly from her tiny lungs no matter which jazzy-soul song from latest album Back to Black she was performing.

Most of the tracks from that triple-platinum offering were given the big-band treatment, which seems to propel them forward from their status as mere album-fillers when you realise the amount of musical choreography that goes into each one.

Prodigious talent

Hit singles from that album, You Know I’m No Good, Back to Black and the recent Ivor Novello Award-winning Rehab were all well received, with several slowed-down segments to allow the audience to sing along. And new song Tears Dry On Their Own, which is “about being in a doomed relationship” also had the place bouncing – earmarking a potential success when it’s released in August.

This is an essentially sad song but with an upbeat tempo, which allowed Amy’s fine backing singers to show us their moves. And move they did – as soon as the show started until the encore ended they were shaking their hips and waving their arms in a fashion not dissimilar to Andre 3000 in the video for “Hey Ya!” Their energetic dancing just about outshone the footwork of the show’s star, whose trademark dance is a simple-but-effective static moonwalk.

But who’s bothered about her dancing when she has such a mightily unique vocal that can give recent anthem Valerie by The Zutons such a contemporary flavour in her encore? Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that she turns up to enough gigs between now and September to warrant winning a Mercury Prize that such a prodigious talent should.