One of the grimmer sights in recent years has been the raiding of the vaults of dead superstars to uncover floods of posthumous albums – using demos and outtakes to create new music.
That will not happen with Amy Winehouse, Universal Music UK chairman and CEO David Joseph has said. Speaking to Billboard, Joseph said he had destroyed her demos to ensure they could not be developed into releasable material. “It was a moral thing,” he said. “Taking a stem or a vocal is not something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.”
Although there has been one posthumous Winehouse album – 2011’s Lioness: Hidden Treasures – it seems likely to be the last. That is probably a good thing, given that Lioness was hardly an artistic triumph. “The compilers have clearly had to pull every trick in the posthumous album book in order to cobble together 45 minutes of music,” wrote the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis in his review of the album.
Joseph was speaking to Billboard ahead of the release of the documentary Amy, on which he is credited as executive producer. Winehouse’s former A&R man – and now the president of her label, Island Records – Darcus Beese told Billboard he blamed the media for driving Winehouse to her death. “She was ill. You had people who had praised her and now they were murdering her,” he said. “Hopefully, when they see their faces on the screen they’ll feel embarrassed.”
Winehouse’s sole posthumous album places her in stark contrast to Tupac Shakur. In the 19 years following his death in 1996, seven new Tupac studio albums have been joined by 10 compilations, two remix albums, one soundtrack album, one live DVD and countless singles and featured appearances.
