Tony Bennett & Amy Winehouse: "Body and Soul"

In early 2007, Amy Winehouse gave a curious response when asked by The Guardian to name her greatest fear. “Dying old or never meeting Tony Bennett,” she said—a tellingly honest answer proving both her retro soul and her lusty self-destruction, the two personal qualities that fast became pigeonholing marketing gimmicks as she stumbled into superstardom. “If I never meet him,” she continued, “I might as well be dead.”

Good for her, then, that she got the chance to sing with her idol before abruptly passing—and good for us, at least in spirit and in theory, that the resulting duet was released Wednesday to coincide with what would have been Winehouse’s 28th birthday. The song choice is “Body and Soul,” an 80-year-old standard that through many decades was required recording for established crooners, and this latest version is being touted as Amy’s final studio session, as well as a torch-singing torch-passing between a living legend and the unsanctioned queen of the new old. And as the first of many presumable posthumous glimpses of Winehouse’s raw talent, it simultaneously constructs her legacy and defines in the minds of many her tragedy: that what we hear here hints at an impressive body of work yet to come, which we can only assume would have outshined the two albums she delivered while still around.

Still, “Body and Soul” also establishes that Winehouse was not cut for this type of mawkishness. Her tone warbles through the track as if searching desperately amidst synchronized strings and predictable dynamics for room to improvise, her voice barely making out the words as she goes. She actually seems bored more often than not, offering perhaps an unenthusiastic yawn at the material and a despondent kiss-off to whatever record executive scored her the duet. Reminded that producer Salaam Remi, who honed half of Back to Black (2006), complemented Winehouse on her bluntness when presented with a song she disliked, one gets the sense that she compromised some amount of artistic intuition for this shot at meeting Bennett. Considering, in fact, that Winehouse’s discography always had one foot rooted firmly in hip-hop, a largely dormant production like “Body and Soul”—undanceable except for swaying and entirely nightcap in mood—is hardly as comfortable for her as one would gather from the myriad Billie Holiday comparisons.

That voice, however, overrides her ennui. Even shaky and incomprehensible, it still finds moments of aching beauty. And credit is due to Bennett, who at 85 still sounds warm, confident, and approachable, like there’s a string in his back that when pulled makes tasteful music. Winehouse, by comparison, sounds quite often like she’s fighting—for air, for continued relevance, and for the affection of an icon all at once. The results are far from perfect, but at least a reminder that while Winehouse’s voice constantly evoked the jazz singers of yore, her sensibilities and subject matter were both best when looking forward.