Woes of Amy Winehouse fuel her allure

She generated almost deafening buzz last year, but industry insiders, pop culture bloggers and pop music fans weren't just going on about Amy Winehouse's music. Sure, her sound -- a self-consciously retro blend of vintage Motown beats and punchy Stax horns overlaid with wry, self-penned lyrics -- stood out.

It was all showcased on Back to Black, the British star's American debut, which is up for the album of the year award on tonight's 50th Annual Grammy Awards show. Behind Kanye West, who leads with eight nominations, the blue-eyed soul sensation is up for six shiny gramophones, including record and song of the year for her ironic hit "Rehab."

Critics endlessly praised her rich woozy vocal style, dripping with Billie Holiday influences, and the record has sold more than 2 million copies. But her well-publicized troubles with drugs and alcohol have seemingly overshadowed the record and her skills.

In keeping it real by defending her drug and alcohol addiction, Winehouse perpetuates an old stereotype of the downtrodden blues woman whose greatest art comes from her greatest private pains.

But rather than being genuine, something about Winehouse -- the music and persona -- feels contrived. Perhaps in an attempt to be authentic, to keep it real, she seemingly has gone out of her way to make her troubles very public.

And in this reality-show age where the public's appetite for self-destructive stars is almost fiendish, Winehouse absolutely shines.

"She has gotten so much hype and so many nominations because of her behavior," says Neysa Ricciardi, a singer-songwriter based in Philadelphia. "In every category, there were songs and artists that I found far more compelling than Amy Winehouse."

And amid all this hype, Winehouse's representatives said late Friday that she won't attend tonight's Grammys in Los Angeles. Although she resolved her visa issues with the U.S. Embassy, she'll still appear via satellite from London. Winehouse apparently decided not to stray too far from the very place she sang about never entering: rehab.

"Sometimes the nominations and winners of the Grammys remind me more of a People's Choice Awards than a contest among music professionals, with just as much sway coming from the tabloids as from the persuasion of music," says Ricciardi, a voting member of the Recording Academy.

Late last month -- after talks with her record label, management, family and doctors -- Winehouse checked into a treatment facility.

This was days after the 24-year-old singer-songwriter was pictured in The Sun, the British tabloid, inhaling fumes from a glass pipe. The shot came from a homemade video, time-stamped Jan. 18, that shows the artist with messy blond hair, sitting in her London flat smoking what the British Sun says is crack.

But that was just one in a yearlong series of pitiful Winehouse incidents caught by private and paparazzi cameras. Images of the singer looking high or inebriated on stage or wandering half-dressed and crying through a London street have been all over tabloids and the Internet.

After her husband Blake Fielder-Civil was sent to jail for perverting the cause of justice after a bar fight, Winehouse stopped touring. And her drug use reportedly increased.

She has said in interviews that her longtime volatile relationship with Fielder-Civil, whom she married in May, inspired the songs on Back to Black. The artist claims to have written the pain-in-my-heart lyrics during a break-up.

"This situation could be looked at as a case study of Schadenfreude," says Patty Williamson, a media professor at Central Michigan University. "Schadenfreude is a German term that more or less refers to the pleasure we take in others' misfortune or humiliation. ... It can also be applied to the fascination we all have with the stories surrounding Winehouse, Britney, Lindsay Lohan and the like. However, Winehouse is one of the few paparazzi targets that has actually garnered critical praise for her talent."

But with just two albums (her debut, Frank, was issued in the United States in November), there is definitely room for more development. On Back to Black, Winehouse affects soulful nuances better than her acclaimed British soul-revitalizing peer Joss Stone. With a biting, Brill Building-inspired approach and a hip-hopped Ronettes look, Winehouse has managed to stand out in a crowded field of overdone pop diva wannabes.

Her sound, of course, owes much to Motown, Phil Spector and Booker T. and the MGs. But Lauryn Hill did the retro, hip-hopped soul mix more convincingly years ago. And it was the Dap-Kings, a Brooklyn-based soul-funk band known for backing the dynamic and woefully underrated Sharon Jones, that re-created the dusty, '60s sound heard on Back to Black.

Despite the artifice of Winehouse's image and sound, she is genuinely talented -- a distinctive singer and a sometimes brilliantly sarcastic songwriter. There's definitely much more for her to accomplish. It will be interesting to see how she blossoms once she shakes her demons and transcends the old, tired blues-woman persona. And when or if she cleans up her act, it will be interesting to see whether the public still cares about Amy Winehouse.