Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse's brief career followed a tragic, almost perfect circle. After achieving critical acclaim in her native Britain as a jazz and soul vocalist, her global pop star rose in 2006, thanks primarily to the booze-soaked, adamantly unhealthy smash "Rehab." And in 2011, after several professionally unproductive, personally difficult years of scandal, very public relationship problems and even more public addiction problems, the talented and troubled young singer was found dead of alcohol overdose. The Londoner rose to prominence on the back of gritty, often bleak autobiographical work: songs that revolved around doomed relationships ("Stronger than Me"), drink ("Rehab") and drugs ("Addicted"). But that aside, it's Winehouse's voice -- which saw her welcomed with open arms by Britain's two premier performance schools -- that formed the foundation of her appeal. By turns as knowing and vulnerable as Billie Holiday's and as streetwise as Ms Dynamite's, it reflected her fluctuating musical fixations (jazz, hip-hop and, later, Motown) and was a perfect tool to deliver her wry and affecting observations on the pratfalls and pain inherent in the pursuit of love. As Winehouse herself put it: "I told you I was trouble/ You know that I'm no good."