Two Minutes of Perfection…Except…
By Aaron Wulff
Amy Winehouse was 19 years old when she recorded “There Is No Greater Love.”
When I was 19 I was still trying to figure out how to do laundry without turning everything pink. Amy was in a studio, singing a jazz standard from 1936 like she’d been doing it for forty years.
The song was written by Isham Jones and Marty Symes back in 1936. It’s one of those tunes that’s been around so long, everybody’s recorded it. Duke Ellington. Dinah Washington. Nat King Cole. Aretha Franklin. Billie Holiday. Miles Davis. Sammy Davis Jr. swung the hell out of it. It’s a proper jazz standard, the kind of song that separates singers who can actually sing from singers who just have good producers.
Amy could actually sing.
She put it on Frank, her debut album from 2003. The album’s named after Frank Sinatra, which tells you everything about where her head was at. She wasn’t trying to be a pop star. She was trying to be a jazz singer. The big hits came later with Back to Black and Mark Ronson, but Frank is where you hear the raw talent. No beehive, no drama, just a voice.
“There Is No Greater Love” wasn’t a single. It wasn’t a hit. It’s track 7 on an album most people discovered backwards, after “Rehab” made her famous. But if you ask jazz nerds about Amy, this is the track they point to.
The recording is spare. Commissioner Gordon produced it, (you should hear his Batman Christmas album).
He kept things simple. You hear Amy’s voice front and center, and she’s not showing off. She’s not doing runs or trying to impress anybody. She’s just singing the song, straight and true. There’s a restraint to it that’s remarkable for someone so young. She understood that sometimes the bravest thing a singer can do is hold back.
She was 19. I keep coming back to that because it’s absurd. The control, the phrasing, the way she sits behind the beat just enough to make it swing without rushing. That’s not something you learn in a year. That’s something you either have or you don’t. She had it.
Can you dance to it?
Frankly, no.
If by dancing you mean stepping intentionally to a discernable beat.
This song was meant for listening. Which is why I prefer cooking to it. Amy sings behind a soft arrangement, and there’s not much rhythmic drive to lock onto. It’s not that there’s no beat, it’s that this is a vocal performance, and now I’m drinking all the cooking wine.
At most, you can enjoy a slow romantic sway. And if that’s what you’re interested in, then so be it.
You might also want to ask if this is the right vibe. It’s a beautiful recording, and it’s melancholy. Amy sings it like someone who’s loved and lost, not someone who’s celebrating a beginning. The lyric says “there is no greater love than what I feel for you,” but the delivery has a wistfulness to it. It’s gorgeous, but if you want joyful, you’ll need to shop around.
These are not knocks on the song. It’s a masterpiece. Amy at 19, singing a 67-year-old standard better than almost anyone who came before her. That’s worth celebrating.
If you love Amy and you want her at your wedding, “Valerie” (the Mark Ronson version) is more upbeat. Or “Tenderly” from the same album. But “There Is No Greater Love,” beautiful as it is, is probably better for your living room than the dance floor.
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