The tragic loss of Amy Winehouse has robbed us of a young, if fatally troubled, life cut down in its prime. It has also cheated British music of a talent, at 27, whose best years surely still lay ahead. 

As a homegrown singer, she was with without question the outstanding vocalist of her generation. Without Amy, there would have been no Adele, no Duffy and no Lady Gaga. She may have been an alumni of the Brit School, but Winehouse was also a British great. 

In an era of manufactured stars and precision-tooled pop puppets, she was the real deal. For all her demons - and, sadly, sometimes because of them - she cut through pop's hyperbole. Her rawness and emotional honesty harked back to an era when the best singers were more believable. For a white girl raised in the North London suburbs, she had the sweet, sure touch of an Aretha Franklin or Etta James. 

Her talent was obvious from the off. The first time I saw her live was at the V Festival eight years ago. Tucked away at the bottom of the bill in one of the small tents, well away from the crowds gathering for headliners the Red Hot Chili Peppers, she oozed class. Dressed in a Fifties-style frock, playing a white Fender guitar, she showed nervous glimpses of a talent that would later wow the world. 

I was lucky enough to interview her twice. The first time came shortly before the release of debut album Frank in 2003. Having met her in a photographic studio in Soho around lunchtime, we relocated, at Amy's insistence, to her favourite local Italian cafe, where we enjoyed a lengthy chat over a large, non alcoholic lunch. She struck me then as a witty, intelligent young girl on the cusp of womanhood. 

She was full of the joys of life and understandably excited about her future. Confident in her own abilities, she was gleefully irreverent. Whereas other singers, media-trained to within an inch of their lives, were masters in the art of diplomacy, she happily sounded off with little regard of the consequences. Unconcerned about how her words might look in print, she dismissed her peers. Dido and Norah Jones, huge at the time, were among her targets. They were ridiculed for being bland. She was savage, too, in her criticisms of Madonna. She was naive, yes, but immensely likeable. A glowing review ensued. Later, shortly before the release of second album Back To Black, I came face to face with a different Amy. Noticeably more slight than when we'd met three years previously, she turned up late in a coffee bar close to her North London home, but still turned heads with her long, raven black hair and striking eye-liner. 

But, while some of that earlier youthful, sparkle had gone, she still struck me as a woman who knew exactly what she wanted. Perhaps more aware of her own flaws, she even retracted what she had said three years earlier about her fellow female stars. 'When I was promoting my first album I was very defensive, so I lashed out a lot,' she said. 'But I won't be saying anything negative about other singers now. They've got their job to do. I'm just happy to be doing my own thing.' More mature in many ways, she was ready to let her music do the talking. 

And Back To Black did just that. Rooted in emotional turmoil, it will go down as one of the classic British albums. Even now, in an era where female pop rules the charts in the shape of Adele, Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Gaga, nothing has come close to packing the sheer emotional punch of Back To Black. A departure from her jazzy debut, it was stark, simple and stunningly direct. 

Musically, it was influenced heavily by Sixties girl groups such as The Shangri-Las and The Supremes. Lyrically, most notably on signature tune Rehab, it was clearly affected by the demons that were now troubling the singer. A far more commercial prospect than her eclectic debut, it went on to sell millions. It won Grammys and Brits and established Amy as the pre-eminent soul girl of her age. 

Despite her problems, the Amy I glimpsed during our brief encounters was different from her public persona. Nobody makes records as good and enduring as Frank and Back To Black without an intimate knowledge of the essential ingredients of great pop music. And Amy certainly had that in abundance. 

For me, the most recent example of the way in which her talent truly touched people from all walks of life came in a conversation a few weeks ago with the great Tony Bennett, who sung with Amy on a track, Body And Soul, from his forthcoming duets album. As a singer who has worked with the best, from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald, he had no doubt as to where Amy stood - she was one of the best. Remember her this way. 

 

Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk. Access: August 02nd, 2011.