Jaymie Morgan

HUMN 2010

Section A

Reading Response

In Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” music video, there is a lot of depictions of broken-

heartedness. The video is shot in black and white, which shows a lack of brightness and emotion.

The music video shows a funeral, which, based on the song lyrics, symbolize the death of her

relationship with Blake. Amy is also alone for almost all of this video. There are other people in

the video interacting with each other, but the only person who interacts with Amy at all is the

man who opens the car door for her. This shows how distant and alone she feels. They could also

be at “her funeral”, since one line in the song says, “I died a hundred times”, so the funeral in the

video could be a depiction of how she feels inside. One part of the video that was significant to

me was when Amy repeats “Black” over and over again. As I mentioned during the class

discussion, this part of the song sounds hypnotic, or like she’s in a trance. I thought of it as her

being sucked back into the “black”, or the dark place she was in before the relationship with

Blake started. In the video, during this part of the song Amy is standing alone in front of a grave

and throws a flower on top. With the way the song changes and slows down a bit during this part

of the video really amplified the sadness and heartbreak in the song. Another thing I noticed is

that she’s not crying in this video. In other music videos I’ve seen depicting funerals, the person

in the video is usually crying and showing some emotions. This, along with the line “me and my

head held high and my tears dry,” show that she could be so overwhelmed with negative

emotions that she’s can’t feel anything anymore.