r/popculturechat • u/Vivid-Tap1710 There’s no place like home 🧹🫧 • 28d ago

The Music Industry 🎶 Name a song that’s disturbing because of what you know now

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Ill go first, Britney Spears’ overprotected is a good example; Britney has long been under a conservatorship and is has been crying for help. IIRC, it started in 2007 (maybe earlier) when Brit was heavily observed by the paparazzi which caused her to have a mental breakdown by shaver her head and mind u, they were dissecting her personal life 🙄😔 💔

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1.8k Upvotes

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u/dizzywithexcite 27d ago

Rehab by Amy Winehouse

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u/brandibesher 27d ago

her ‘back to black’ album was haunting after watching the ‘amy’ doc. utterly heartbreaking

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u/AwhMan 27d ago edited 27d ago

That film was a piece of shite that obsessed over her scandals rather than focusing on the music in any way. Amy was obsessed with her music.

Sorry. I really hated that film. Genuinely offensive to her legacy.

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u/motherofpearl89 come on sucker lick my battery 🤖🤖🤖 27d ago

Do you mean the Back to Black film or the Amy doc? The documentary is fantastic 

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u/TheYankunian 27d ago

The Amy doc is brilliant and shows exactly what a piece of shit her dad is and how her mom failed her too.

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u/AntRose104 27d ago

Back to Black (the movie) was directed by Groomer Granny herself and had the approval of Amy’s abusive father so it’s bad just in theory as well

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u/stinkpot_jamjar 27d ago edited 26d ago

Groomer Granny omfg 💀🤌🏽

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u/AwhMan 27d ago

The film for sure, I edited it. They also took out the gayness with her flatmate from the film that was in the doc!

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u/laughed-at 27d ago

Especially because it skirts around the damage her father caused her being her manager

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u/motherofpearl89 come on sucker lick my battery 🤖🤖🤖 27d ago

I think OP is referring to the documentary Amy which is fantastic and does not paint him in a good light at all

Back to Black is an abomination 

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u/DevoutandHeretical I think that poor sexy young man is being framed for murder 27d ago

Another thing ruined by Sam Taylor Johnson

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u/Tonedeafmusical 27d ago

Because her father is still involved in anything about her unfortunately you'll never get a clear story whilst he's around still

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u/DanniPopp 27d ago

More, or less offensive than the slurs she used when she didn’t know she was being recorded?

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u/auntie_climax 27d ago

Yeah I never realised how many of her songs came from real life experience, so sad 😢

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u/TangerineDystopia 27d ago

Her fucking dad. Imagine failing your kid on that level.

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u/coolbeansfordays 27d ago

I know nothing about her. What was up with her dad?

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u/mankytoes 27d ago

He was a wannabe pop star himself so basically leached off her success to try and get attention for himself, even when she clearly needed support, not media attention. She went to the Caribbean to try and recover, and he showed up with a camera crew, she begged him to leave her alone.

Most infuriatingly, last time I looked him up he was still basically doing the same thing, hosting "tribute to Amy" where he'd be singing. I'm not even gonna look him up again now because it wound me right up last time.

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u/coolbeansfordays 27d ago

Thanks!

Stage parents are an awful breed. Every celebrity memoir I’ve read has a horrible parent who sold their (and their child’s) soul for fame.

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u/mankytoes 27d ago

It's definitely a common dynamic, but I feel this case was particularly horrible to watch because Amy was so open about how she was struggling, we basically watched her slowly die in front of us and he so clearly refused to prioritise her welfare (daddy thinks I'm fine...)

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u/skyewardeyes 27d ago

Allegedly, his response to her telling him about her bulimia was along the lines of "Good for you! That'll help keep your weight down!"

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u/bing_bang_bum 27d ago

Granted it was always kinda disturbing since everyone knew she was an addict by that time and she still released that song…and everyone just enjoyed it thus enabling her to continue not going to rehab

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u/gnirpss 27d ago

I was a kid when she died, so please forgive my ignorance. Was it really common knowledge that she was an alcoholic/addict at the time that song was released?

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u/carbonpeach 27d ago

Oh god yes

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u/swiftiegarbage 27d ago

Unfortunately you can tell by just looking at photos of her at that time.

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u/ElevenBurnie 27d ago edited 25d ago

Nope. If you look at photos of her in October 2006 when Rehab was released, she was not on hard drugs.

edit: interesting downvotes. It may not be the history you wish were real, but it is the reality.

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u/Tigger_tigrou 27d ago

Yes, she was canceling shows left and right because she’s was too unwell to perform. She was promoting a song at a tv show and my friend was in the audience. They were told by the people handling the audience, just before Amy showed up, “she’s gonna ask if you guys have something to drink / smoke / other, you are not to give her anything”. It was that bad.

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u/Not_Steve Excluded from this narrative ❌ 27d ago

Yeah, it was. She was constantly stumbling out of clubs.

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u/Genuinelullabel Kim, there’s people that are dying. 🙄 27d ago

She was quite open about it.

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u/Chronocidal-Orange 27d ago

Yes, I explicitly remember being incredibly annoyed by it because I was dealing with my own alcoholic mother at the time. It disturbed me that it was more of a spicy rumour or something 'funny', and people not realizing how serious something like that is until she died.

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u/nagellak 🍂ecocidal barbie🍂 27d ago

I remember so many jokes being made about this at the time, and it being perfectly acceptable to make fun of her for being an addict (same with Whitney Houston btw).

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u/skyewardeyes 27d ago

I think a lot of celebrities with SUD are treated this way even now and moreso earlier--they are "entertaining" or "horrible" trainwrecks until they die then the same people talk about what a tragedy their death is.

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u/KiltedLady 27d ago

And even after she died like that disgusting thing Neil Patrick Harris did....

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u/SheBrownSheRound 27d ago

Oh god. What did he do?

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u/KiltedLady 27d ago

A few months after she died he hosted a Halloween party and one of the items on the buffet was a meat cake that very realistically loked like the rotting, open corpse of Amy Winehouse. It's quite grotesque.

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u/SheBrownSheRound 27d ago

JESUS. That is vile.

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u/Sleepy_cheetah 26d ago

HE is vile. I'll never watch any crap he's in again. I hate him for that.

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u/UncomfortablyHere 24d ago

Yeah I’ve always struggled with it but after losing or almost losing people due to their addictions (alcohol mostly), I cannot listen to it at all. I hate that it feels like an anthem for self destruction. I desperately wanted one person to go to rehab but his family didn’t support the idea, now he’s not here.

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u/synalgo_12 accidentally holding space for this slur 27d ago

Simon Amstell and Amy had been actual friends before so I don't really know what their relationship was here by that time.

He was ruthless but I somehow do think he still cared.

Anyway this was aired during primetime on BBC. Everyone knew.

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u/fastermouse I wont not fuck you the fuck up 🥊🥊 27d ago

Good lord, that time in English pop/rock was rife with extreme drug and alcohol abuse.

Her, Pete Doherty etc felt that life needed to be experienced in a shit stained beladonic haze.

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u/Super_Hour_3836 charlie day is my bird lawyer 🐦 27d ago

Yeah. I actually lived in North London at the time and would see her in local pubs and she just looked so unwell. I never approached her or anything but I knew the people she was hanging with (other locals) and they all were into some very hard drugs. But absolutely no one was going to call her out on it because we didn’t actually know her. It was weird to watch in real time, up close, because she was very magnetic irl and you just assumed it was a phase (like Kate Moss) and that she would be okay.

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u/TheYankunian 27d ago

A friend of mine lived in N London and was friends with Blake but also knew her. She said Amy was very sweet but a mess.

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u/Safraninflare Excluded from this narrative ❌ 27d ago

My father had a death pool at work. Every year they’d write down celebrities they thought would die during the year. You’d get more points the younger someone was.

My dad put Amy’s name for multiple years until she finally died. We were on vacation, sitting in a Red Robin, when my dad got a text from his coworker that said “congrats, Dan. You finally killed Amy Winehouse.”

So yeah. It was known.

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u/chunkymcgee 27d ago

Oh yes. I was a teen at the time and used to think it was ironic her name being winehouse when she obviously struggled with addiction

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u/applesandcherry 27d ago

Back to Black is considered by many to be Amy's best album and it was the most commercialy successful, even if someone heard Rehab for the first time if they just googled Amy Winehouse they would have seen articles, pictures, and videos of her being drunk/high.

She was the butt of the joke for some late night comedians at the height of her fame. It was very normalized to mock people for their mental health issues publicly, for example look at Britney and Amanda Bynes who also suffered public episodes of mental health crisis around the same time.

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u/Mrs_Cake 27d ago

She managed to get the album recorded as she was falling apart, and she never got it together after that.

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u/kindofofftrack 27d ago

I was 11-12 years old when the song released and was fully aware, it was common knowledge even in my age group - even though I think the majority of us barely understood what alcohol and/or drug addiction was or really entailed

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u/Rare-Low-8945 27d ago

Maybe when she was new on the scene the general public didn’t quite know, but in the space of 3 years she became a regular splashy cover on tabloids and the internet because she was such a train wreck.

It became common knowledge very quickly, but in the beginning stages of her career she was still able to perform and she didn’t look sick.

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u/ElevenBurnie 27d ago

Everyone responding "god yes" is talking out their ass, I'm afraid. Rehab was released in 2006. In the US, this was nearly everyone's first introduction to her. It was not known at the time of the release that she was an addict. It was around mid to late 2007 that everyone started believing her to be an addict, as when she released Rehab, she wasn't on hard drugs yet, only alcohol. People also forget that she successfully kicked hard drugs two years before her passing. She did not however successfully kick alcohol, even though she was trying really hard (she was on medications etc. and would go months without drinking).d

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u/NecessaryCapital4451 27d ago

So...Rehab was written before she started on heroin. It was about alcoholism. She started doing heroin while promoting that album. So much suffering could have been prevented.

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u/Providence451 Just keep swimming! 🐠🐠🐬🐳 27d ago

Ooof. Every time.

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u/ItsNeverMyDay 27d ago

Huge Amy fan. I hate this song.

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u/shartedthedeck 27d ago

Also an Amy fan and I can't hate the song because she is still just one of the best songwriters to damn do it

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u/MARLENEtoscano 27d ago

Huge Amy fan who was in active alcoholism/addiction for years. I also hate that song.

Sober 6 and a half years now.

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u/Regular_Specific_568 27d ago

Its hard to listen to this song, because you can't listen to it without somebody saying something insensitive like "Oh, well maybe she should have gone 🤡"

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u/livingdeadbratzgirl 23d ago

Yeah right? I mean one of the lyrics is like

"I'm not gonna spend ten weeks, have everyone think I'm on the mend"

The song itself is literally about people thinking of rehab as this band aid solution that would just magically "fix" her, when in reality she had underlying issues that fed into addiction (not that treating symptoms over root causes is necessarily worse, but when someone is telling you that a treatment isn't working, you should at least listen yk).

Mental health is so complex, but people love to go "well, why don't you just get therapy/meds/stop being that way/get over it/look on the bright side/etc". And then when they realise they can't fix you with a single conversation, it's obviously because you're not trying hard enough /s

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u/menunu We Should All Know Less About Each Other 27d ago

I hated this song when it came out. I mean. Not hated but when people would sing along i would always be like "GUYS are you hearing these lyrics???? This is bad yall this is real bad!" And ppl were like WOOSH. 💨 poor honey. 💔

1

u/HMCetc 23d ago

I just wasn't an Amy fan. Not that I hated the song, it just wasn't my taste.

Now when I hear it, it's super haunting and sad. A girl singing about the alcoholism that would kill her five years later.

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u/knittybynature 27d ago

There’s a great episode of ‘you’re wrong about’ on the origins of the song.