Dead Celebrities

[anniebgood]

She's not a fundy, but she's been snarked on by the best. She was found dead in her apartment today in London.

When she was on her game she put forth a great show and was a good artist.

Sad loss of life.

[xDreamerx]

Newest member of the 27 club I guess. It's sad. Too bad she wasn't able to go on longer and become more famous.

[lilwriter85]

I love her music. RIP.

[Triplet3]

I just saw that too, ten minutes ago. So sad. She may not have been particularly famous in the US but she certainly was here in the UK.

There seem to be so many deaths in the news at the moment. :( Obviously there's all the Norwegian ones, but also Lucian Freud died the other day, and now Amy Winehouse...makes me wonder who'll be next :(

[fundiefan]

Newest member of the 27 club I guess. It's sad. Too bad she wasn't able to go on longer and become more famous.

She WAS famous. About as famous as one can get only for all the wrong reasons. She was tabloid and media fodder. The world watched as she raced down the track to her death. It is not surprising in the least and that is the most telling fact of the whole thing.

These 'famous' people who ruin their lives are allowed to die in the public eye because the public consumes their lives like air.

They have no one in their lives who isn't riding on the money train, so no one will stop it as it speeds up towards disaster.

The list is pretty endless of these tragic, sad lives.

[ophelia]

It's really sad because she was such a great artist.. but on the other hand is not really supringsly that she dies that young. She has got a long drug history and I was often wondering myself that she still made it.

Sadly I heard it on the radio here in Germany just a few minutes ago and it was the top news.. not Norway. I don't know.. but this felt "wrong"..

[GolightlyGrrl]

I was just about to post this. Damn, when she was on she was ON! I couldn't stop listening to Back to Black a few years ago. I think I'll take another listen.

[3 is enough]

It's very sad. Hope she's at peace now.

[Sprocket]

Totally the percocet talking when the first thing I think is: she should have said "yes, yes, yes to rehab". I'm going to hell.

[Guest Anonymous]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/2 ... lp00000009

Another member of the 27 club, gone too soon :(

I do think it's kind of tasteless that they ended the story with her "Rehab" video.

[valsa]

Totally the percocet talking when the first thing I think is: she should have said "yes, yes, yes to rehab". I'm going to hell.

You won't be alone. My first thought was "In other news, the sun rose again in the east today..."

[clibbyjo]

You won't be alone. My first thought was "In other news, the sun rose again in the east today..."

Funny you would say that, my daughter and I just heard Rehab on the car radio and I was explaining the tragic life of Amy and her downhill spiral because of drugs. As soon as the song was over, they annouced she had died. I told my daughter the same thing, someone should have forced her to rehab.

I would rather have the person hate me for trying than dead for lack of trying.

[luckylibrarian]

Wow. How very sad for her. I hope Lindsay Lohan is paying attention.

[erunerune]

It's just so sad, even more so because everyone saw this coming for years. I had tickets to one of her US shows a few yeas back, and even when I bought them I was predicting a good chunk of the tour would be cancelled - it was, and I never got to see her. In some respects it's surprising she lived as log as she did. No snark here: RIP Amy.

[Witsec5]

I don't know why but I feel like crying over this and I of course have never met her and don't know her. Such a waste of potential and of a life. I had hoped that she would get it together someday but time ran out.

[LeatherCouch]

She WAS famous. About as famous as one can get only for all the wrong reasons. She was tabloid and media fodder. The world watched as she raced down the track to her death. It is not surprising in the least and that is the most telling fact of the whole thing.

These 'famous' people who ruin their lives are allowed to die in the public eye because the public consumes their lives like air.

They have no one in their lives who isn't riding on the money train, so no one will stop it as it speeds up towards disaster.

The list is pretty endless of these tragic, sad lives.

I don't disagree with you in the least. That said, I see regular people go through the same thing all of the time and nobody makes a cent off of them. For instance, the woman whose family has done everything they can to get her help, only to have her end up in the courts, ordered to rehab, yet she still won't go. Her children are taken away from her, her life is crumbling and yet she refuses every offer of help, even though it comes at no financial cost to her and she has a whole community of people supporting her. Even when the refusal of help means jail time...there is no incentive great enough. It happens all of the time, and it's always sad, but I don't know what the answer is. You can give a person all of the help in the world and if they don't want to change their lives they won't.

[leena_noor]

I have to admit that while I'm saddened that she never cleaned her life up, when she openly admitted that she couldn't write unless she was sad or stoned, I knew it wasn't going to end well. I agree..while rehab musically is a wonderful song, the ironic placement doesn't allude me.

[valsa]

someone should have forced her to rehab.

I would rather have the person hate me for trying than dead for lack of trying.

Wouldn't have worked. Even if it were legal (which I'm not sure it is, outside of court-ordered rehab), trying to force an addict to change when they don't want to isn't going to do anything. They have to want to change.

Perhaps I'm just very cynical but I don't see much of a huge tragedy here (outside of the general tragedy of any person's death) My sympathies lie much more with, say, the victims of the Norway attack/shooting or some 27 year old who dies of cancer or gets hit by a bus on the way to work. I don't know much of anything about Amy Winehouse but isn't she essentially a rich singer who slowly killed herself? I know people her age who are facing living out on the streets, some of them with children, and wondering where their next meal is coming from. What about her life was so bad that she had all these problems?

[fundiefan]

I don't disagree with you in the least. That said, I see regular people go through the same thing all of the time and nobody makes a cent off of them. For instance, the woman whose family has done everything they can to get her help, only to have her end up in the courts, ordered to rehab, yet she still won't go. Her children are taken away from her, her life is crumbling and yet she refuses every offer of help, even though it comes at no financial cost to her and she has a whole community of people supporting her. Even when the refusal of help means jail time...there is no incentive great enough. It happens all of the time, and it's always sad, but I don't know what the answer is. You can give a person all of the help in the world and if they don't want to change their lives they won't.

I agree. You can't help someone who doesn't want it and won't help themselves. But I also fully believe that in lives such as hers and any of the hundreds of other public train wrecks that there were a whole lot more people in their lives 'looking the other way' than people attempting to help and intervene. "So what if she was smoking crack in public last week, she has a concert to go to and we better get here there and not confront her". "Yeah, she was drunk in public last night but her tour starts next week and she really needs to get on the road". "She left rehab after two weeks but we have a series of appearances and performances lined up for her and she has to concentrate on that".

It is a tragic life and an even more tragic death, regardless.

[Deleted03]

O_o

I hope it shakes some of the other in need of rehab and make them get straight. It's so very sad.

[xDreamerx]

She WAS famous. About as famous as one can get only for all the wrong reasons. She was tabloid and media fodder. The world watched as she raced down the track to her death. It is not surprising in the least and that is the most telling fact of the whole thing.

These 'famous' people who ruin their lives are allowed to die in the public eye because the public consumes their lives like air.

They have no one in their lives who isn't riding on the money train, so no one will stop it as it speeds up towards disaster.

The list is pretty endless of these tragic, sad lives.

Not really. Not in the way that Morrison or Hendrix was. Not in the way that will earn her that kind of immortality. Dying young is pointless if you won't be forever remembered.

[Artemis]

This is probably churlish but so what?

Thousands of people are dying on Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, and in Somalia the Islamist militia won't let aid in. Sunt lacrimae rerum - these are the things for tears - not a singer who had every opportunity to make good but couldn't control herself.

OK, she may have had talent but is she really important enough to shove a major humanitarian crisis and a massacre in Norway off the news?

The media needs to get things in perspective.

[Guest Anonymous]

Totally the percocet talking when the first thing I think is: she should have said "yes, yes, yes to rehab". I'm going to hell.

Apparently she entered rehab for "alcohol addiction" in late May of this year. If she did 6 weeks, that means she'd only been out for a matter of days.

It wasn't just any old rehab either - she was in The Priory, one of the best in the UK.

I really do sympathize with her family (and her [ex?] husband, although he was no better when it came to drugs). I have a sister who cycles in and out of marijuana abuse, and it's totally not fair to judge her family for this. There is little to nothing anybody can do for an adult who either doesn't see the problem, or doesn't want the help.

[fundiefan]

Not really. Not in the way that Morrison or Hendrix was. Not in the way that will earn her that kind of immortality. Dying young is pointless if you won't be forever remembered.

Of course not in the same way, or for the same reasons. And of course she won't be remembered for her artistic talents for generations to come. She will be remembered as the talented woman who threw her life away.

Famous for differing reasons doesn't make one more or less famous. She won't have musical influence on future talents like Morrison or Hendrix, but she will be remembered. Just as she is known.

I don't personally know that I have ever heard her music. I'm not a big music person to begin with. But, I sure as hell know who Amy Winehouse is. I know her dramatic life and history without every having (knowingly) heard her music.

One tragedy does not negate another, either. They are different in scope, but no less tragic. I read the news of her death in the side bar of ABC News. It did not 'push' Norway off the front page. And if it did, yeah, the media is effed up. But, that is also nothing new and it is also part of the problem when looking at the lives of public train wrecks.

[JesusFightClub]

Poor Amy, poor wee girl. I just only read this on Free Jinger so I know no details but I shed a couple of tears. I expect it was either OD or suicide.

She was obviously someone who couldn't cope with the competing demands of fame and her tendencies towards addiction and mental illness. I didn't personally enjoy her music but I know a hell of a lot of people who did and I could recognise her talent. The "celeb machine" chews people up and spits them out.