With all the endless publicity, speculation and tedious moralizing that has surrounded the tragic, premature death of Amy Winehouse, it’s easy to forget that she was first and foremost a pretty great singer. With this in mind, we’re glad that a snippet of what would prove to be her last recording has surfaced online — hopefully it will refocus people’s minds away from the manner of her death and back onto what she should be remembered for: her music. Or maybe we’re just being wildly optimistic here. Either way, click through to hear a 46-second excerpt from “Body and Soul,” the duet she recorded with Tony Bennett just before she died.
This was apparently played during a radio interview with Bennett this week — the song features on Bennett’s upcoming album Duets II, which is due out in mid-September through Columbia, and will also be released as a charity single. The recording suggests that, whatever state Winehouse was or wasn’t in during the last year of her life, she was definitely in peak form when she recorded this — Bennett called her “really the best of all the young artists that I met in the current scene in the last 10 or 15 years,” and described her death as “just too tragic… I wanted to talk her out of the drugs, but unfortunately I never had a chance to talk to her.” RIP. [via Jezebel]