KEY POINTS:
Amy Winehouse has so much soul you can feel it the minute she speaks. She's a musician with a passionate love of soul music, of romance and, notoriously, of liquor.
Today she's in the pub. It's a loud pub so she trots upstairs with the phone. "My friend
runs it," she says, unsurprisingly - and closes herself off from the noise.
Then, in equal parts Tough London Broad and Sweet, Simpering Animal-lover, she says, "His little puppy dog is looking at me from under the door. Lily! Helloooo!" She sweet-talks the dog for a bit.
"Sorry. What was the ... ?"
Are you allowed to be in a pub?
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Because you supposedly wrote the song Rehab for good reason.
"Oh. Right. Well I've been working quite hard but when I'm not working I'm going out, having a drink and playing pool, trying to spend some nice time with my boyfriend and make him feel like I still love him because I'm always working."
More on the wine in Winehouse later; it's not hard to see why she's out for a good time.
In 2003 she released the patchy but competent jazz/R&B album, Frank, which received a Mercury Music prize nomination. But critics have been beside themselves since its follow-up, Back to Black. With a retro backdrop of do-wop, Motown and vintage reggae, and melodies powered by Winehouse's booming black-woman voice, it's hard not to get caught up in the nostalgia.
"You listen to a lot of girl groups these days it's a lot of [she puts on a bitchy voice] 'You want me? Can't have me! You lost me! [Expletive] you!' And back in the day it was, 'I had you, I lost you, I love you, I'll never get my heart back, you've broken my heart, you've ruined my life but I still love you.' And I like that."
Back to Black is essentially a heartbreak album drenched in the sounds of girl groups like the Shangri-Las and the Supremes. But Winehouse puts her own hip-hop spin on things, with a little help from pop producers Mark Ronson (Lily Allen, Robbie Williams) and Salaam Remi.
"You made me miss the Slick Rick gig," she spits on Me & Mr Jones, a song that could otherwise have been a hit in the 50s.
It's that lovelorn sentiment that led to her penning Rehab, which sounds a bit like Aretha getting stroppy over hip-hop beats: "They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no."
After a break-up with a boyfriend 18 months ago, she went on a self-destructive, binge-drinking rampage, to the point where she'd wake up next to a bottle and continue drinking. Her friends found her "in a state" and her manager shipped her off to get help.
But Winehouse wasn't prepared to stay for long.
"I walked in with immaculate make-up, immaculate hair, I looked good, I had high heels on, and the guy looked at me like, 'Why are you even here?' Going to rehab was just a joke. I only did it for fun. I only did it so everyone would shut up. I walked in, literally, to save face."
Perhaps sensing a ''denial" question, she continues.
"I can drink a lot and not be paralytic, y'know? When I'm in a good mood and I'm in the gym every day, I'm a good drunk and if I don't go to the gym and I'm miserable then I'm a terrible, terrible drunk."
Her depression has seemingly ended, although that could be the beer talking. It's more likely the therapeutic nature of her songs.
"Every time you sing them it hurts a bit less because you make something good out of something that's so horrible. I write songs because I tend to feel very strongly about something. I'm quite a happy-go-lucky person. I'm not miserable. I only write about things when I can't really deal with them."
She can now deal with her love life, anyway. She's been going out with a chef for eight months, and the relationship seems to be going swimmingly, judging by the numerous times she mentions it during the interview. So who knows where her next batch of gut-wrenching soul will come from.
The British tabloids, perhaps? Several photos surfaced last year showing the once voluptuous singer dwindling to a bony frame. There were rumours of anorexia, which she denied. Winehouse has no qualms about answering questions about her mental state.
"It doesn't bother me what people say about me. They say 'Amy's lost a lot of weight'. Or 'Amy punched her boyfriend and she's a bad drunk'. I know I'm a bad drunk. The thing is, you get people going, 'You're a bad role model because you're so skinny now' and I'm like, 'To be honest, when I was bigger, I used to smoke weed all day. Now I don't smoke weed and I go to the gym'. I'm such a bad person. I'm such a bad role model."
It's not just her weight that has changed. Her style, once soft and feminine, has become brazen, vampish. Her hair is "five times as big". She has tripled her tattoos - the latest is a bellbird on her arm with musical notes surrounding it, and a line that reads "Never clip my wings".
So where does her attitude come from?
"I've just got thick skin. I don't believe anyone should care. I'm a really kind person, a really giving person, but when people are sensitive, they're overindulgent. If you're sensitive or you don't say things because you think they might be perceived wrong, well, you're a mug. Life is too short."
