When it was announced that the first bit of music the world would hear from Amy Winehouse after all that tabloid trouble would be a cover of Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” for a Quincy Jones tribute album, Vulture found it just a touch uninspiring. But now the cover is actually here, and it’s tough not to get carried away. Winehouse lets it fly on the Mark Ronson–produced do-over — turning in a dialed-in, muscular vocal performance that moves effortlessly from louche to anguished — and sounds not even a tiny bit horribly addicted to drugs while doing so. No word on an official Back to Black follow-up or anything, of course, but there is one other potentially positive sign: Winehouse has gone from tweeting stuff like “ronson you’re dead to me; one album i write an you take half the credit — make a career out of it? don’t think so BRUV” to things like “can’t find me bleedin notebooks — theyve done a runsies xxxxxxxx LOVE YOU RONSON XXXXXXxxxxxxxxx.”
