It’s not often I use my blog as a space to vent. Yet words couldn’t describe my frustration when I heard Beyonce had gotten the rights to cover the album title single ‘Back To Black’ by Amy Winehouse. For me, Amy Winehouse is one of the best british musicians to come into the limelight, with an effortless iconic voice and the honest raw songwriting talent that graced us in ‘Frank’ and ‘Back To Black’. Don’t get me started on how the producing in ‘Lioness: Hidden Treasures’ was all over the place and nowhere near the finish Ronson gave ‘Back to Black’.

Beyonce is not an artist, not anymore at least. She doesn’t write a lot of her songs, her massive breakout of Crazy in Love lyrically had nothing to do with her aside from the vocals. Her Daddy has fixed and sorted everything out record label wise even when managing Destiny’s Child he ensured she was at the forefront.

In fact it’s not the first time Bey’s been stealing songs. ‘If I Were A Boy’ her massive  number one was not written about her and her struggles. It was written by BC Jean who has her own, original version. BC Jean’s copy of the song wasn’t picked up by her own record label. Daddy Mathew Knowles heard it, liked it, got the publishing rights and gave it to baby girl Beyonce. BC Jean vented her frustration on her Myspace page about this situation “I have been reading some of these comments and to set the record straight from the horse’s mouth – IF I WERE A BOY is my song; YES, I wrote this song; It is my story; a painful one, and the song is very dear to me.” Now the same thing seems to happen again.

Mitch Winehouse has recently taken to twitter stating he didn’t know Beyonce was covering one of Amy’s biggest hits “First I have heard about Beyonce and Back to Black. Sounds like some of you don’t like the idea.” Yes spot on Mitch. Amy’s dad later went on suggesting Beyonce should donate some money to the Amy Winehouse foundation. See I think Queen B will probably do just so and great, it means many kids will benefit. Yet my frustration is purely for the slaughter of the music.

Jay Z has been drafted in to be in charge of Great Gatsby’s soundtrack. Now I love Baz Luhrmann, but I think we can agree everyone raised an eyebrow upon eagerly clicking the youtube link to watch the trailer when we heard ‘No Church in the Wild’ by Kanye West and Jay Z play in the first 30 seconds. Now Jay Z has given his wife Beyonce a bit of controversial exposure by letting her cover ‘Back To Black’.

I heard the snippet from the third trailer and it was even worse than what I expected. Beyonce’s vocals are lifeless, they lack any soul or emotion on the track, what replaces these components which made Winehouse’s original so beautiful is a handful of diva sass which is the only thing Beyonce seems capable of. Oh that and screaming. No I don’t like Beyonce’s voice, I don’t like Beyonce’s brand and I’m not a teenage girl obsessed with how Beyonce is a strong independent woman. I don’t even like Beyonce’s ass. It just infuriates me how big mainstream stars with pockets full of money have the privilege to obtain rights to cover legendary songs and just suck the beauty out of them to add another quick dollar onto their bank account.

Please Bey, just stick to your booty shaking songs, be adored by your minions but for the love of real music keep your pepsi promoting face out of the rest of ours.

Here’s a link to the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJAfLE39ZZ8