The celebrity death that hit me the most, quite possibly. Extremely talented individual whose downfall was painful to witness. Still get misty eyed when I hear her voice. A high 4 rounded up to a 5.
And if you havent seen the doc then I urge you to, it’s essentially a horror film.
Very sad death, seemed like a right laugh (her appearance on Never Mind the Buzzcocks is hilarious, if also a little bit concerning in retrospect), but there’s absolutely nothing there for me musically. Reckon you could pick a bunch of kids from the Sylvia Young / BRIT school and ask them to do a soulful voice and get something listenable. If you’re into it you can probably appreciate the subtleties, but it’s not for me.
Never need to hear Valerie ever again but Back to black gives me chills down the spine every time. Amazing voice and was doing something far more interesting at the height of landfill indie.
Great songwriter and lyricist. Think B2B is one of the only Mark Ronson things that works, he should have retired after that. Frank’s a really good album too, has that loose Badu sound
Really dislike Valerie and hate that it’s her most played song nowadays
A really talented person who possessed an incredible voice and real star quality. Added a really fresh voice to something that with pretty much any other singer I’d find a really boring retread of something that had been done a million times before.
Her issues are well documented, and I’m not qualified to go into them. It was obviously terribly sad.
And yet, I’m not sure she actually had more than a handful of good songs, and I think Back to Black especially is incredibly overrated as an album. Everything was there for her to make a classic, but she never did.
And I find her deification in the years since quite uncomfortable, especially in the area around Camden. A) I’m not sure her legacy warrants it & B) they have made an industry out of her death. None of it sits well with me.
I don’t know how you rate someone like her. On the scale I normally use, it’d be a 3, but I don’t know…
Hated her at the time, just wasn’t my thing. Was dragged along to see her at Glastonbury and was bored to tears. Tried again last year and realised she was actually brilliant. B2B is on heavy rotation now.
The film is excellent, if not incredibly upsetting.
Such a desperately sad story. I can’t honestly say I especially enjoyed her music, but we’ll never know if all that talent could have one day produced an absolute knockout record.
