It began with music.

The camera focuses in on a bunch of teenage girls in Southgate, documenting a sleepover, joyful and unworried. Amy, though vastly different in face and stature, opens her mouth, trills and riffs emerging as casual and easy as breathing. Here, we catch a glimpse of her musical prowess even at the tender age of 14.

The scene cuts to some early videos of Amy with her friends, showing a playfulness and kindness which had never been displayed by the media. We then see Amy at her audition with Island Records, singing her self written song “I heard love is blind”. Here, we see someone yet untainted by the poison of fame, someone with a love of music pure as the fourteen-year-old girl who sang during that sleepover.

That someone would never be again. Though funny in many places and beautifully composed, there was an omnipresent sense of foreboding during the entirety of the documentary. We know how Amy Winehouse died, it was only a matter of waiting for the scene to appear on the screen. The backstories, combined with Anthony Pinto’s penchant for nostalgia-inducing music, left me with a sinking feeling in my stomach during the whole movie. I’ve followed Amy’s musical journey since Frank, from her girlish tones on “Cherry” and jazz riffs on “Know You Now” to her more mature sound on Back to Black.

For me, when I think of Amy Winehouse, I don’t think of the drugs or the addiction. I think of the talent which was stolen too soon. I think of the jazz spirit which manifested itself within someone so young. I think of the voice of soul, so rare in nowadays music industry, which was extinguished far too early. I don’t think of the drugs, because that was a separate person. When watching Amy perform, it was evident that there were two major separate identities within her that battled for dominance. There was the young, rebellious girl who loved nothing except music and music alone, thinking of nothing except of bringing soul and jazz back to the modern music industry. This girl took crap from no one and allowed no one to boss her around. Then, there was the media-constructed, peer-molded Amy. This version of Amy was born of a mother too weak to enforce rules and a father absent from his family. Her desire for her father’s approval caused her to revert to childishness as an adult, becoming unable to make her own decisions, always seeking guidance from her father or her string of boyfriends.

When I think of Amy Winehouse, I think of the first girl, because that’s the one I believe was the real Amy. Her very last recording was “Body and Soul” with Tony Bennett, a jazz icon and one of Amy’s biggest idols. I believe that Amy knew she couldn’t last much longer under the feeding frenzy that her life had become under the influence of the media and her money-hungry father. She knew her time was coming to a close, which is why it was so fitting that this recording–an iconic jazz classic, sung with an iconic jazz singer–was her last. Her story began with music, and in the end, it ended with music.