Amy Winehouse died in 2011 at the age of 27. Although her career was tragically cut short, she's become an idol and influence to many young artists after her. When an artist like Amy passes so young, there's usually a rush to put out posthumous projects and unreleased music, but Amy's case is unique. After her death, Universal Music executive David Joseph revealed that Amy had been recording for a third album, but the recordings were destroyed. He told Billboard, "It was a moral thing. Taking a stem or a vocal is not something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.”
This demo, called "My Own Way," was recorded in 2001 when Amy was just 17 years old. It was before the fame, the first album, and the major labels. The song was written by Gil Cang and James McMillan and recorded by Amy as part of a collection of songs she was putting together to win over record labels.
“We’d been writing quite a lot of pop tunes, doing a lot of pop promos with various artists who would come in, many of various, dubious talent," Cang explains to Camden New Journal. "It was at a particularly dire time in the pop world—lots of terrible, terrible girl bands and boy bands and we had to make something for them. Amy came in to see us, opened her mouth and just blew us all away.”
On why he's releasing the demo now, Cang says, “I’ve had it knocking about for so long. I found it again last week and thought—I’ll put it out there so people could hear it.”
Listen to "My Own Way" below.
