Incredible vocalist and five time Grammy award winner Amy Winehouse, aged 27, was found dead in her home on July 23rd, the result of an apparent drug overdose

When I first heard Back to Black I could not believe that beautiful sound was coming from such a young woman. She had a voice that only seasoned female jazz musicians held, and it was natural. How prohetic it was that one of her biggest singles, “Rehab”, dealt with drug abuse and how she refused to go get help.

Sadly, it was that same alcohol and drug abuse that ultimately silenced her beautiful voice. Just a few weeks ago she had to cancel her entire European concert tour because she appeared completely wasted at her performances and couldn’t even remember lyrics to her own songs.

I have to admit, when I heard the news of her death I also found one other thing to be a bit ironic as well. Having died at the age of 27 I realized that the media and music conspiracy theorists will now surely place her in the same unfortunate “immortal” category as Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix. All of whom eerily died well before their time at the exact same age.

The ones she will join in the “27 Club” were also all victims of the cruel effects of alcohol and drugs and have left an empty void of what might have been. We can now only imagine the incredible music we missed out on over the last forty years.

Consider the other members of the 27 club who died prematurely:

Janis Joplin – Heroin Overdose

Jimi Hendrix – Sleeping Pills, Wine, Asphyxiated on his own vomit

Kurt Cobain –  Suicide. History of depression and drug abuse

Jim Morrison – Official cause of death unknown but believed to be drug overdose.

All of the these talented musicians suffered silently, in their private lives for the most part, until it was too late. The tragic part of the Amy Winehouse saga was that the public bore witness to her struggle on a daily basis through magazine and Internet gossip sites.

One question will continue to bother me about this unnecessary waste of life. When will we as a society stop waiting for the inevitable to happen before we do something?

Instead of Amy Winehouse now being the subject of a documentary about musicians who died tragically at age 27, and how she, along with Hendrix and Morrison are all jammin’ up on cloud nine (where we’ll never hear them), couldn’t someone, anyone have gotten her the help she needed?

Article first published as The Tragic And Unnecessary Death of Amy Winehouse on Technorati