It may come as a shock to find out that I don’t much care for Adele. Ostensibly I should be into her because she does, or tries to do, that soul thing that I like so much. The problem is, she doesn’t do it with much soul. She’s got talent out the arse, but when she sings the talent is all I hear. There is nothing of the person behind it.
Now it will also come as no great surprise that I care very much for Amy Winehouse. The talent is certainly there, as evidenced in the above video. I’m with old school MTV Unplugged in believing that, if you strip down an artist’s repertoire to the bare essentials you can get a very good sense of who the artist is. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with who Amy Winehouse was for sure, but you definitely know her when you listen to her.