A rare and exceptional Amy Winehouse demo has just been released
London producer Gil Cang has released an early Amy Winehouse demo, created when she was just 17 to shop around to record labels before signing to Island Records.
After Winehouse’s death in 2011, and an unsuccessful posthumous album Lioness: Hidden Treasures, Universal UK CEO David Joseph decided to have all her other demos destroyed to prevent another posthumous album from coming out. In 2015, Joseph told The Guardian “It was a moral thing…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.”
Cang had been holding onto the demo for years, and decided that the world should have it. When Cang worked on writing the demo, he had been writing songs for a lot of pop girl groups and boy bands, and wasn’t impressed. That, of course, changed with Winehouse. After hearing Amy Winehouse sing the tune, he was amazed. “We were struck immediately by her talent – it was a real jaw on the floor moment. We were like wow, yes,” he commented.
The tune is a mid tempo pop/R&B song called “My Own Way”, reminiscent of our favorite 90s R&B girl groups, with Amy Winehouse’s soulful, jazzy, expressive vocals. Listen to the song down below.