Well slap me senseless. Amy Winehouse in talent recognition scandal. The "troubled" "Decline-house" (full marks to the Sun sub who dreamt up that little number) scooped five of the top Grammy awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for, appropriately, Rehab, which is where she is now. But before she'd even had time to stuff the gongs into her handbag she was on the sharp end of a yet another dressing down, this time by reformed crack-head Natalie Cole, the Grammy veteran daughter of Nat King.
She bemoaned: “I think she has a great talent but I don’t agree with the Grammys giving her those nods.
“I think it sends the wrong message, that even in the midst of her stupor of drugs she can get nominated for all these awards.
“It’s a slap in the face to artists who work very hard that they give it to someone who really obviously doesn’t have a grasp of what she has.”
Which, all things considered, seems a little hypocritical given that Cole spent sizeable portions of her career in such a stupor she once refused to vacate a burning building.
However, her words are now unquestionable, as Cole has renounced her crack-related demons, struggled through rehab and is now free to distribute her pearls of wisdom (as opposed to rocks of crack) wherever she sees fit.
I can only assume the Grammys she collected while under the evil influenced have been duly returned - twisted false idols, reminiscent not of her singing talent but her shameful dalliance with hard drugs.
If Winehouse chooses to smoke suspicious looking substances while playing chase the kitten then so be it - it evidently has no affect on her ability to create music worthy of winning awards.
During the depths of her addiction (or "in the midst of her stupor of drugs" as Cole puts it), even after her husband had been sent to prison, she staged one of the best live performances of last year at the Glasgow Barrowlands (a gig which, so tenuous was her grasp on life, I was attending in a professional capacity, just in case she keeled over and died right there on stage).
Whether she was on drugs or not was completely irrelevant - she was brilliant.
If we were seriously to purge drugs from music there wouldn't be much left - it'd end up like the Tour de France, where you've banned so many of the top competitors it starts to look like a charity bike ride.
While our national intake of banned substances continues to rocket, our acceptance of others doing them has hit rock bottom. Former drug user Dwain Chambers has recently gained the dubious accolade of becoming the world's fastest leper. See, he should be banned from running (says Dame Kelly Holmes, no less) because he once took drugs to make him run faster in a straight line than other people running in a straight line - even though he now doesn't take drugs and still runs faster than anyone else running in a straight line. But, you know, DRUGS.
I digress - Winehouse won her Grammys not for the state of her private life but because she was the best singer. Once you start figuring people's private lives into the equation you'll end up with the awards being hotly contested between the McDonald Brothers and Same Difference - and nobody wants that.
Anyway, as is so eloquently pointed out in Peep Show, drugs are fine now. Everyone knows that.
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