Fifteen years after Amy Winehouse’s death, her mother, Janis Winehouse, is reflecting on her daughter’s sudden rise to fame and the challenges that came with it.
To mark the anniversary of the five-time Grammy winner’s passing on July 23, Janis wrote an op-ed for UK platform iNews, describing Amy as a “victim of her own success.”
“She didn’t want it, but it just followed her. And she’d be like, ‘Who, me?’” she wrote, according to NME. In 2014, Janis also shared her memories of her daughter in the memoir Loving Amy: A Mother’s Story.
Amy Winehouse was 27 years old when she passed away in Camden, England, on July 23, 2011, due to accidental alcohol poisoning.
Janis Winehouse believes her daughter’s struggles with addiction were connected to a lack of confidence, even as the singer achieved major success with her 2003 debut album Frank, which arrived three years before the release of her critically acclaimed and highly successful album Back to Black — the final album released during her lifetime.
“She didn’t have confidence. Hence the alcohol. I think it’s the same with many, many addicts with alcohol. The alcohol takes away the pain. And that is a horrible thing with addiction,” Janis wrote.
“Once you’re addicted, you’re addicted. The only boss is the addiction. People say, ‘Oh, no, you just stop doing such and such.’ They don’t get it. You can’t stop because your body is saying I need it,” she continued.
Janis Winehouse also shared that, over the years since her daughter’s passing, she has learned to “get on with life.”
Meanwhile, Amy Winehouse’s former husband, Blake Fielder, rejected claims that he was responsible for her death during a March episode of We Need to Talk. Fielder, who was married to the singer from 2007 to 2009, said Winehouse had “agency” and “did what she wanted to do.”
On July 19, the Amy Winehouse Foundation, established by the singer’s parents in 2011 to help people battling substance abuse, hosted a live tribute concert in Camden titled “A Day for Amy.”
