What gives with this cult of Winehouse? Last year's Back to Black hardly seemed the masterpiece it was hailed to be. The girl-group references were nice, but why not eliminate the middleman and go directly to the Ronettes or Shirelles? This domestic release of her 2003 U.K. debut serves only to demonstrate further limitations of Winehouse's voice, both technically and emotionally. Amy over-relies on her use of melisma, and pretty much operates out of just one aggrieved stance. What's tolerable in a single track becomes tiresome over the course of an album. The jazz pretenses on Frank really don't work. Winehouse couldn't cut it in the jazz world -- or with real soul singers. Maybe much of her popularity derives from her nationality. Brit standards are different from American ones. You can get away with pretending to be a jazz singer in the U.K. But it's hard to do that in the land of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.

-- Leopold Froehlich