ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: ''Back to Black'' is your second album, though it's your first to be released in America. Your actual debut, ''Frank,'' was much jazzier. When you were hitting upon what worked with this album, did you have that sense of, I'm finding who I really am with this? Was it, this is me now, or this is me forever?
AMY WINEHOUSE: No, when I went into this album, I just felt really sad. I felt really bad. I was clinically depressed, and I put it into music. And that was me at that time...I'm not a very premeditated person. I wrote my first album when I was listening to a lot of jazz, a lot of hip-hop. When I listen to my second album, I was listening to a substantially smaller amount of music — soul, doo-wop, girl groups — and it shows. I was just listening to very different types of music when I did two different albums.
Do you feel like you're a true romantic, or is there cynicism that keeps you from that?
No, I'm a very romantic person. I'm romantic about everything.
I think people think of you as being...
A miserable, cynical person?
No, not really. Some of the songs describe obsessive love, and listeners, whether they're in that moment or not, want to believe that's real for the singer, and that at the peak of experience you're that obsessive about love and who you're with.
Yeah. If you don't throw yourself into something, you'll never know what you could have had.
But then you have songs that might be construed as not so romantic, like ''You Know I'm No Good.'' It's hard to pick up on your exact attitude about love, because...
Well, they're just the way I feel about certain things at a certain time, rather than who I really am. I'm not interested in writing songs so people can find out who I really am. I don't give a f---. There's stuff that I wouldn't want people to know.
Can we ask about the engagement? You must be very happy.
Yeah! I'm very happy, thank you.
That's less than a week old at this point, right?
Yeah, I think so.
How long have the two of you been back together?
Oh, we've been back together about a month, but we've been seeing a lot of each other for quite a few months. We are best friends, and it was a strain not to be able to see each other because we were both in other relationships. It's not nice to hurt other people's feelings, so...[long pause] I choose my words very carefully.
The boyfriend that you recently broke things off with was writing some mean stuff on his MySpace page about how upset he was that you were back together with Blake.
Well, understandably, he felt really hurt. And I think when we hurt, we all make things seem a certain way, or make things look worse than they are. I think he'll be all right. Something tells me he'll be all right.
We always end up reading about your love life and extracurricular exploits on Perez Hilton's site. And of course you're friends with him now. How did you meet?
I met him at some style awards thing, and I just loved him. I'd seen his site twice or something, and then Kelly [Osbourne] introduced us...I just thought, I like you. Because he's a bitch. Although, when I showed him my ring the other night...I went in to see him [at the gossip blogger's unofficial office, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Sunset Blvd.], and he was like ''Show me your ring, show me your ring,'' and I showed it to him, and he's like, ''It's tiny!'' And I'm just like, ''Perez, you know what, you better be f---ing glad you're gay, because this is why no one is ever gonna buy you a ring.''
NEXT PAGE: ''I'll be all right by myself...You're just worried that we're gonna go and get a flight to Geneva, aren't you?''
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