The beauty of any singer being in the music industry for a while is being able to know their instrument. It’s hard enough trying to keep everything in check as a guitar player, but for someone that has put their voice through the wringer as much as Rod Stewart, he could tell when vocalists were punching well above their weight class.
But it’s not like Stewart’s voice was going to be for everybody. His beautiful rasp whenever he sang was fantastic for folksy rock and roll and went down fantastically well when working with the Jeff Beck Group, but there’s also his disco era that some fans took to like oil and water. There were certainly limits for where he could go, but he was also one in a long line of similar vocalists to come out of the British blues boom.
Stewart could certainly belt in the same way that his heroes could, but that’s not what the charts wanted all the time. After all, Eric Clapton made a solo career out of a voice that was a lot thinner than what Stewart was working with, and even when hard rock was ruling the airwaves, there was a lot more room for female rockers to show their stuff right alongside the macho male frontmen.
Janis Joplin had already kicked down the door for what female singers could do in the public eye, but there was far more range for where music could go once women started taking on a greater role on the hit parade. People had become used to Aretha Franklin and even Dusty Springfield, but hearing Joni Mitchell’s soft croon or Joan Jett getting a bit nasty behind the microphone was always a welcome change from the thousands of bluesy belters.
Once rock reached the 2000s, though, there was no one doing anything close to what Amy Winehouse did. There were still female rockstars that were changing what female singing could be like Karen O, but Winehouse’s blend of bluesy rasp, casual ‘fuck-off’ attitude, and deep vulnerability is what made her impossible to resist when Back to Black.
So when she was taken from the world at such a young age, Stewart felt that music had truly lost an icon when comparing her to other legends like Madonna, saying, “[Madonna’s] made a bloody fortune with a minimal voice. You can’t knock it – any girl who can make that sort of dough has to be admired. But we lost the best one of the lot – Amy Winehouse. What a voice that was.”
Although it’s easy for a lot of classic rock artists to jump on a bandwagon whenever an act hits the big time, Winehouse truly was the full package when she first debuted. There might have been a retro feeling to listening to track like ‘Me and Mr Jones’ and ‘Love is A Losing Game’, but compared to what someone like Adele is doing in the modern age, Winehouse did everything so effortlessly, singing songs that could casually break your heart within a few lines.
But like Stewart, Winehouse seemed to know a universal truth about singing better than anyone else. Whether you’re listening to ‘You Know I’m No Good’ or ‘Maggie May’, both songs know how painful heartache can be, and each of them has had their heart broken more times than either of them can count.
