Amy Winehouse's family is giving fans unprecedented insight into her short life.
The late singer, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 27 due to accidental alcohol poisoning, will be memorialized by her loved ones in an upcoming book, Amy Winehouse: In Her Words, to celebrate what would have been her 40th birthday.
"Many artists talk about waiting for the perfect song to drop into their lap from the heavens. For them, writing is a labor of love, but for Amy, songs seemed to fall easily," her family members, including parents Mitch and Janis Winehouse, wrote in the foreword of the memoir — out August 29. "Every now and then it was as if a lightbulb went on in her head. She'd disappear to a quiet place for a while and put together a few chords. A song would emerge, then a whole album."
"How do you do it? Do you write the melodies or the lyrics first?" Mitch asked her one day. "'Oh, come on, Dad! Everyone can do it!' she laughed. Except everyone couldn't. That was Amy — she had very little understanding of just how brilliant she was. Famously in one interview, she said of Janis: 'I thought everyone could sing, until I heard my mum.'"
"It wasn't until after Amy's passing, when we started sifting through her writings and drawings collected from her early childhood, that we started to understand more of how, behind that casual attitude, Amy had been carefully honing her talent for years," they continued of the "Back to Black" crooner. "The joy of reading through all of Amy's work now always lightens the devastation of losing her. Despite what many people presume or have written about Amy's life in the past, we're hard-pressed to find much torment or misery in any of her writings."
Despite the joy of reliving the Grammy winner's inner thoughts, her beloved relatives also noted they were still confused by the troubled life she led.
"That said, reading through it we can't say that we truly understand her either. Whether or not writing or composing became cathartic for Amy we don't know for sure, but it was certainly a creative process that she came back to time and again in her happiest periods, as well as in her darkest moments of addiction," they added.
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The book also includes snapshots of Winehouse growing up, from school pictures to shots of her journal entries.
People obtained the exclusive photos, notes and excerpt from the new book about Winehouse.
