I don't listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff.

"I don’t listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It’s all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You’d have an entire story in song. I never listen to, like, white music—I couldn’t sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song." Thus spoke Amy Winehouse, a soul whose voice carried the ache of ages, and in her words lies both nostalgia and truth. She reveals to us not merely a preference, but a philosophy: that music is not background noise, not fleeting sound, but a vessel for storytelling, for atmosphere, for drama that stirs the heart and soul.

The origin of her words is found in the traditions she drew from: soul, jazz, gospel, and the raw storytelling of rhythm and blues. These forms of music, birthed from struggle, carried not just melody but history. Every note was weighted with memory; every lyric unfolded like a parable. The old stuff, as she called it, was rich with drama, painted not for passive listening but for immersion. A single song could tell of love found, lost, betrayed, or redeemed. To Amy, this fullness, this narrative power, was the heart of art itself.

Contrast this with what she calls the new stuff. She hints that much of modern sound had grown shallow to her, more concerned with gloss than with story, more about rhythm than revelation. Where the old stuff was dramatic and atmospheric, creating worlds in its verses, the new often failed to offer that same depth. This is why she turned back, like an ancient pilgrim returning to the sacred texts, to the voices of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington—singers who told stories that broke hearts and mended them again.

Her dismissal of “white music” like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd was not hatred, but honesty about her own roots and passions. She did not hear her story in their sound. Her soul resonated with the cries of Black music—with jazz and soul and Motown. This was the wellspring from which she drank, the fire that shaped her own art. Just as Homer drew upon the epic traditions of Greece, Amy drew upon the storytellers of soul, and from them she forged her own legend.

History gives us many such examples. The griots of West Africa carried whole lineages in their songs, telling the histories of peoples through melody and rhythm. Their music was not entertainment but memory, identity, and prophecy. So too in Amy’s time: to her, a song without a story was hollow, stripped of its ancient purpose. She craved the old ways, where one could close their eyes and walk through the entire arc of a life within a single performance.

The meaning, then, is powerful: art must be more than surface. Music must carry story, must summon atmosphere, must give voice to the drama of the human condition. Without these, it risks becoming empty sound. Amy Winehouse calls us back to the well of depth, urging us to remember that true songs do not fade when the radio is turned off—they linger, they haunt, they remain as part of the soul’s memory.

The lesson for us is clear: when you choose your art, seek the story within it. Do not settle for what is easy or popular alone; search for what stirs you, what paints images in your mind, what makes you feel both the wound and the healing. And if you create, let your creation be dramatic and atmospheric, filled with the weight of your truth. Let it be more than sound—let it be testimony.

Practical wisdom calls us to action: listen deeply, not passively. Explore the old stuff, the roots of music, the places where art was not commodity but communion. Learn the stories carried in those sounds, and let them shape your own. And in your life, whatever your craft, do not choose the shallow path—choose the path that tells stories, that stirs hearts, that leaves echoes in the world long after you are gone. For this was Amy Winehouse’s gift, and it can be ours if we dare to live by it.