How anyone could mistake the "black" in this song for anything other than black tar heroin is beyond me. Maye if you have never heard of black tar heroin, you might mistake it for something else - but Amy was definitely into heroin and other opiates and other drugs as well. Does anybody not know that? Her drug use, as blatant, unhidden, and over-the-top as it was, was actually a part of her cache as an artist and a big part of her personal identity. She emphasized it with her clothes, makeup, hair, body, etc. She never tried to cover it up or "maintain" - if she was f****d-up, she acted like she was f****d-up, and admitted being f****d-up, too. It is, at least, an honest approach, but I am not saying it is a healthy one. But maybe it is more healthy than the many drug-dependent, alcoholic or drug-abusing musical artists who publicly deny drug or alcohol use, while their lives slowly - or quickly - unravel. How many tragic downfalls there have been, so many deaths, so many lost careers, families, reputations and fortunes? This could literally be a party game - how many drug or alcohol related deaths in rock & roll or popular music artists can you name? I mean, where do you even start: Hank Williams? Janis Joplin? Jimi Hendrix? Jim Morrison? You get my drift. Many of Amy Winehouse's songs contain overt drug references, although it can be missed sometimes here in the us because some of her slang may be unfamiliar to Americans, because she is - I mean, was - from the uk, and they use some different, often very funny, and colorful, terms for various stuff. Her music also deals quite bluntly with themes of sexual obsession, co-dependency, loneliness, emotional starvation, infidelity, betrayal, selfishness, interpersonal conflict, and all else that make relationships bad. She never sidesteps the difficult issues. I think it is one of the many things that make her music so compelling, so different and yet so easy to identify with - if not the exact circumstances, then the feelings behind them, at least. And then there's her amazing, versatile, unusual voice - her distinctive sound, and her masterful phrasing - she was very young, but she had what old pro's like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joe Cocker, Tom Waits, Peggy Lee, and a few others had. They, and she, had that certain something that takes a melody, a lyric, a way of turning a phrase or of breathing a word and suspending it in air, and makes it theirs, and somehow, for the first time, it's dead-on, like nobody else ever sang it right before, and in that vocal styling is imbued all kinds of meaning that somehow never seemed to come across before, when someone else sang it, even if they sang it perfectly well. The great ones can take a song, or a fragment thereof, and what they do with it, and what they give back, to us, the audience, a bunch of strangers, is something intimate and touching, meaningful and personal, and it provokes within a kind of feeling, something that is deep and which comes welling up from somewhere just south of the heart, that we cannot help but sense, and respond to, involuntarily, at a physical, visceral and emotional level, and it happens even when the listener is not aware of what's being said. I mean, you could be from Japan, or Java, or Uzbekistan, and be able to read, speak & understand only Japanese, Javanese, or Uzbek - or Uzbekese? - or whatever! - but if you heard Amy Winehouse, (or any of the other artists I just mentioned as a few examples), sing, it wouldn't matter if you didn't understand the lyrics or know what the words were or what they meant - you would still be moved, you would still feel things, and it would be real. That's a gift and a rare one, to cause people to feel things deeply. I believe Amy will go down in history as one of the truly great ones. Yes, it is very sad her artistic career, not to mention her one and only precious life, was cut short, and so tragically. Think of all the stuff we will never hear that she could have done. And that's just the selfishness of a listener speaking - think of all she could have done, and felt, and loved? She certainly had the talent, and a rare gift for what she did for us. And we, the listeners, are better for having had the privilege of being present for it.

In reply to rocknrollchick87, thank you for translating the French phrase in the last part of the song, I had no idea what exactly it meant, although I knew what a couple of the individual words were.* (see Footnote, below). I always liked the Psycho Killer song; it was one of the first really avant garde songs that I heard on the radio in the late 70's. The Talking Heads, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground - their music made me feel darkly hip; it wasn't just "ooh, baby, baby, I love you" music - it dealt with things like the bleakness & boredom of most people's daily lives, the hassle and un-fun daily grind of feeding a drug addiction, and how lethal the stress caused by the expectations and pressures and speed of modern society, could be - bad enough to turn you into a psycho killer, apparently. This was around the time that the phrase "going postal" first came into popular usage, in reference to the stressed-out us Postal Service worker who just couldn't take it any more, and shot up his workplace with a gun, killing a bunch of coworkers, and saying it was due to job stress of being a mailman. So I always thought of Psycho Killer as an expression of how anybody can have those feelings, and the person in the song not wanting to be that way, not wanting to hurt anyone, so he runs away, and advises others to run away from him so they don't become victims of his wrath, rage, anger and frustration. Also, by expressing his anger through the lyrics, he is able to let off some steam - to literally vent his feelings of frustration and pressure, with words instead of violence, and thus not become a psycho killer himself. *(Footnote:) Unfortunately, I had only one semester of French in school, and that was in junior high - like 7th grade, I think - and the only thing I came away with, and can say convincingly and with a good accent, is the American Pledge of Allegiance. Now tell me: Why in the world would they teach that, of all things? It's not going to ever do you any good - certainly it would not help you if traveling in a French-speaking country - unless you want immediately identify yourself as a ridiculous and clueless American - nor would that phrase be useful in the United States! It would have been much more apropos to teach is how to navigate our way around a restaurant menu - something I had to learn on my own in my late teens and twenties and which I am still learning - although I unfortunately mispronounce much of it!)