I was a little stunned this week. I love when I can let an artist’s work wash over me, consume me and put it’s grip on me. Usually a musician has a couple of good songs that I obsess over for a good period and I add it to the stack of my ever growing collection. With Amy Winehouse, I think every song resonates to the very fiber of my being.

After searching 5 different record stores to have only found the area where this CD should be empty, I started to feel a little concerned that I wouldn’t get my own copy. This thing must be flying off the shelves! Strategy would need to be used and I’d call places to see if I could perhaps get one of the clerks to hold a copy so some doofus who saw she was at the SXSW Festival this year couldn’t put his dirty little mits on it. I managed to track down one where I was sure I wouldn’t be paying some outrageous price for it. Two copies left! So I grabbed it and marched over to the counter and handed it to emo dork clerk.

$12.99 + tax later ($7.99 on iTunes), I had Back To Black, the second release but first American debut for Ms. Winehouse, and I’m literally blown over by the depth and raw power of this 23 year old’s voice. How can somebody so young belt tunes out like that? Lyrically sassy and dripping with emotion, I sit listening to some of the most well crafted pop music I’ve heard in my lifetime and I don’t mean any disrespect. The arangements that harken back to the day of Motown classics such as the Supremes or thick walls of sound from the Phil Spector produced Ronettes are somehow made current and it’s not just that the music lacks all this hisses and pops that one might hear from going through your mom’s and dad’s vinyl collection either. Every song has plucked the sweetest bits from doo-wop, soul, jazz, and ska.

Right out of the blocks, you are confronted by the hip-shaker “Rehab” – a song written in reaction to her management company telling her she drinks too much – so you brace yourself for what you have to get ready for on the rest of the recording.

Despite what may or may not be going on in Amy Winehouse’s personal life, which seems to be all the tabloid press in the UK can talk about, the vocals, arrangements, quality and love for the music genres that have been tapped for this album come highly recommend as this body of work is for anyone looking for something different. If this record doesn’t chart there is something seriously wrong with American ears.