Kaliope Jordan

Prof. Diehl

HUMN 2010

2 April 2021

How Love Became a Losing Game for Amy Winehouse and Nick Adams

Amy Winehouse’s album Back to Black consists of songs, mainly written about one

collective topic: heartbreak. These songs can be interpreted in multiple ways, including what

specifically was breaking Amy’s heart when this album was released: her depression, her

addiction to drugs and alcohol, her family affairs, and, of course, the infamous Blake Fielder-

Civil. I saw a lot of this heartbreak take place in one of her more popular songs on the album,

“Love Is a Losing Game”. Not only does this song depict the heartbreak she felt because her

relationship with Blake had ended; it also depicts Amy concluding that love is not something she

will ever win in. This conclusion is very similar to the one that Nick Adams came to in The Nick

Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway—specifically in the chapter titled The End of Something.

At the beginning of “Love Is a Losing Game”, Winehouse states that “For you, I was a

flame…” (Winehouse 0:06). In this opening of the song, Winehouse implies that in her love, she

is burning for a person by comparing herself to a flame. This shows how passionate her love can

be for someone. In the next part of the verse, however, she states “Love is a losing game, One I

wish I never played, Oh, what a mess we made” (Winehouse 0:23). Now, instead of continuing

to speak about how vulnerable she can be with the person she loves, she switches the narrative

and begins to almost condemn love as a whole. She strongly states how love, for her, is a game;

she implies that love is something you either win or lose. And, for her, she has only experienced
losses. This is why when she continues on, she is wishing she “never played” the love game—

now the she has lost love, she feels that she will never be able to experience this love with

another person. Moreover, Winehouse claims “Though I battle blind, Love is a fate resigned”

(Winehouse 1:46). By stating that love is a “fate resigned”, she is stating that the game of love

she plays has an ending that cannot be changed or reversed. Though she feels that she never

knows how a relationship will go (which is why she battles blind), she knows that her love will

always end in a fiery mess and will never be able to be fixed or mended. She also says, “Over

futile odds, and laughed at by the gods” (Winehouse 2:08). These odds could be good odds—

odds that the relationship will not end and continue to be good for her. And since Amy is good at

beating these odds by always losing this love game she is playing, the gods (possibly the gods of

love), are laughing because of her constant loss.

This song really showcases a lot of Amy’s heartbreak and depression she was going

through at the time. Her relationship she had with Blake is an obvious situation that influenced

the lyrics of this song. She had fallen so hard and so quickly for Blake, knowing that he was with

another woman. She tried her hardest to give everything to Blake by dedicating her whole

personality to being like him, and pretty much revolved her whole life around him. In leaving

her, Amy most likely learned that it does not matter how much of yourself you give a person or

how much you love that person—they will always find something better. Though this heartbreak

really affected Amy, this is not where this trend with men and love started. When Amy was very

young, her father left her and her mother. Amy never knew why he left, and the only reason she

later formed a relationship with her father again was because he wanted to be a part of her fame.

She knew this, but still tried to form a normal father-daughter relationship with him. In the end,

she got used to accepting the behavior from men and eventually came to the conclusion that she
will never be able to have a normal, loving relationship with a man. This is why her lyrics make

so much sense—she was constantly losing this game of love because all the important men in her

life were constantly leaving her. And, because she got so used to this behavior, she resigned the

fate of love to always be negative.

A character who came to a similar conclusion about love and how it will always end is

Nick Adams in The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway. In the chapter appropriately titled

The End of Something, Nick ends his relationship with his long-term girlfriend, Marjorie. There

were many things about the breakup I could point out, but the one thing specifically was why the

breakup even happened. Nick was raised by parents who did not seem to truly have love for each

other—they were always hanging on by a thread and never seemed to want to put in the effort to

fix their marriage. So, Nick’s only example of love he had to go by was a couple who really did

not love each other. By seeing how his parents turned out, he concluded his marriage (possibly

with Marjorie) would also end in ruins, so he ended it. Both Amy and Nick have the same

feelings about love: it always seems to fail. And neither of them seems to truly want to try and

find out that love could eventually work out for them. They steer away from the paths of love

and only assume that relationships will always end they will never find true love.

Amy Winehouse and Nick Adams both assume that love is a losing game and has a

specific fate to always end. I can understand why: from very young ages, Amy and Nick suffered

the consequences from their own family’s lack of love for each other, and in turn learned that

their own relationships would end up the same way. For me, I have also only had relationships

with men that have ended up failing. I even thought I had found the guy I would end up

marrying. However, I can have the strength for both Amy and Nick to find out that you can grow

old and happy with a person and find that love can actually be a game you can win.
 Works Cited
Winehouse, Amy. “Love Is a Losing Game.”