Jenny Eliscu

Remembering the singer’s last days, her struggle with substance abuse, and her extraordinary talent:

“[Mark] Ronson recognized the huge-voiced singer with a bad-girl look as part of a tradition stretching back to the Sixties. ‘The Shangri-Las had that kind of attitude: young girls from Queens in motorcycle jackets,’ he told ROLLING STONE at the time. ‘Amy looks fucking cool, and she’s brutally honest in her songs. It’s been so long since anybody in the pop world has come out and admitted their flaws, because everyone’s trying so hard to project perfection. But Amy will say, like, “Yeah, I got drunk and fell down. So what?” She’s not into self-infatuation and she doesn’t chase fame. She’s lucky that she’s that good, because she doesn’t have to.'”

Alongside the world’s tallest free-standing tower, one of the world’s tiniest pop stars is crouched next to a garbage pail, collecting a pile of eyeliner pencils and mascara tubes between her hands. While Amy Winehouse wanders the courtyard of Toronto’s 1,815-foot CN Tower in search of a plastic bag to hold her cosmetics, the man who was her fiancé on that May but who would be her husband five days later smokes a cigarette from my pack and looks bored. Blake Fielder-Civil — or “Baby,” as Winehouse calls him, in an array of inflections that strains imagination — gestures toward the trash can. Her soda spilled inside her fake Louis, he says, pointing at the beaten-up mock Lois Vuitton purse atop the rubbish. “She had that bag for ages.”