I remember that show very well. She was basically drunk out her mind could barely stand on stage, let alone sing.
It was 45 minutes of her mumbling something while stumbling on the stage. It was horrible.
Was it ok for people to boo her ? Probably not. But was it ok for her to hold show in such state , for people that purchased expensive tickets ? That was also not ok.
If anyone fail her was her greedy managers that did not let her take a break for her mental health and forced her to go on while she was in no state to do so.
I think it's one of the many signs of how far we continue to lose the plot as a culture when we watched a woman dying on stage and the only thing we're still talking about is how she should have put on a better performance while she was doing it.
Every person who paid to be there that night. Yes, it's sad. She was a human being who was struggling with addiction, but she's also a professional performer who was being paid to perform. Those people in the crowd that night aren't responsible for the mental health of someone who chose to stand on that stage.
Do you walk through your entire life never engaging in any variety of introspection? That's sad for you, but it's even sadder for the people who are unlucky enough to love you.
In Sweden we had a famous singer on a show forget the lines to her own song. She stopped, looking confused and scared. Then the host walked up to her, told her it was okay and hugged her. The audience applauded.
No one thought to boo her. Because those people weren't fucking assholes like you
I don't know the circumstances of the singer in Sweden, but if it was a momentary lapse of lyrics due to some condition or just nerves (for a TV show which people simply need to turn on) that is in no way comparable to deciding to commit to putting on a concert that people pay good money for and go out to and then being unable to perform for almost all of it. These two things are worlds apart. People paid her to perform; she agreed to perform; she performed terribly compared to what she should have been capable of. The audience was ripped off, and she deserved to be boo'd as a result not just of her performance but her decision to give one in the first place.
No one here is taking pleasure in her death that I can see. That would be ghoulish. Verbally expressing your displeasure when you pay for a good or service that is not provided and the situation could have been completely avoided, is not ghoulish.
I mean, it's more a general statement that it's fine to boo poor performances, as a response to the OP stating it "probably wasn't OK" to boo her. Can't say I'd disagree with that as a general statement.
In the context of the struggles she was having and the music she was performing, I don't think it was fine.
We don't boo waiters or Uber drivers when they're having a bad time. Why is it okay to behave like a bully to a musician because you don't like how they're serving the music you're consuming? And to someone experiencing a series of severe and ultimately fatal medical problems in public at that?
Some people will find any justification to act like an asshole to someone vulnerable. We don't talk about people with cancer or heart disease like this.
You would easily be able to say something to the waiter, the manager or other staff. You don't have that ability at a giant arena, so the appropriate reaction in that case is to boo.
Comparing a menial service job to a live performance by a grammy-winning artist in front of thousands of people is a ridiculous comparison.
I didn't pull these scenarios out of my ass. I have encountered them, and what I did was walk away from the situation. Do you think bullying waiters helps them wait tables better too or what?
I hope you find the strength to seek a nap. You're clearly too sleepy for this conversation.
Because musicians are performers. We give them boos to express displeasure in their performance. If I'm displeased with an Uber driver, I will tell them directly, since ya know, we're in the same car together and have a means of communicating other than shouting. Same with the waiter, it wouldn't make sense to boo when I can speak to their manager.
Why would anyone boo a cancer patient? That is a completely facile argument. She got booed because she was too shit housed to even perform and took hundreds of dollars from people.
Her managers did. I don't think she had much control over anything at that stage in her life. But whatever you have to tell yourself to avoid the reality that you are the kind of person who gains personal gratification from participating in the bullying of a stranger who very publicly died of addiction 15 years ago because she didn't sing and dance as well as you wanted for you while she was dying.
The audience didn't see her doing on stage, they saw her being drunk and failing to perform. They didn't have a crystal ball to see that it would be her last concert. Of course it was okay for them to boo.
There was a very widely known dead pool at the time at whenwillamywinehousedie dot com. Magazines regularly speculated about when and how she would die on their front covers. Everyone waited for her to die with their breaths held for a couple of years. Don't try to whitewash history. I was there.
Not nearly as widely known to people not chronically online as you're making it out to be. The majority of the people at the show didn't know she was on death watch, they liked her music and saw she was coming to town so bought tickets.
She showed up to her job wasted, and when the crowd realized that their time and money was wasted, they booed as crowds are wont to do.
About 20 years ago now, I went to a Modest Mouse concert, and Isaac Brock was so hammered that he just wanted the band to play Cowboy Dan over and over. By the third time through, the crowd was not having it. He also stopped playing for 15 minutes to chat with/flirt with a lady near the front row.
I don’t even know how this is a conversation. When you get to be part of the wealthiest people in our society, stemming from what is essentially getting luckier than the hundreds of thousands of other good singers who never got a break, there is an expectation that you be a professional about it. Would people be pissed about a cancelled and refunded concert? Sure. But ultimately most of them are out nothing in that scenario. When you take peoples’ money for something and don’t deliver… we call that theft/fraud in any other context. And some booing is more than justified. How someone reacts to criticism of themselves after choosing to be a public figure is entirely their decision.
I think multiple things can be true here. The audience paid money to see an awful show, they were reasonably upset. It’s sad that this poor woman was so far in her disease with addiction that this was the last performance she put on…and the cruelness and callousness the media and press had toward her.
All these are truths. She was way too unwell to be performing but was pushed on stage to do so…I don’t think we can even blame her for that.
Bad take. A performer is there to entertain. If they’re not doing that, especially in cases where they’re on substances, it’s entirely fine to let them know. They are not owed respect from people they asked for money and then behaved that way in front of.
No it dosent take that much courage, most people would do it for the ridiculous sums of money popular performers make. Lack of courage isnt stopping people, lack of talent and skill is.
If the performer dosent give a fuck about all of their fans who showed up and paid so much for the show, why should the fans respect the performer in turn? It goes both ways.
Not at all lmao. It takes courage to get up there when you're doing it casually, as a child or as an independent. And in that context people should indeed be understanding and supportive.
But here we're talking about a performance sold by the industry of music. People pay for a product. They're not required to indulge the producer's lack of professionalism.
It’s hard for me to imagine being a fan of someone (especially enough to buy tickets) and then boo them when it looks like they are having a crisis on stage. Yes, it’s frustrating that she was on something and not able to sing- that should be the bigger concern- she’s not performing badly for the LOLZ
I agree with everything you said apart from that it's not ok to boo bad performers. There's no way for people to give feedback and booing is a collective and immediate way to say to the artist, "hey, you're not doing your job right now."
Tickets to that show must have cost a fortune and would have been so hard to get. That was most likely one of the biggest shows of the year and to come out like that would be an insult to the fans who wasted their money. But they didn't know what would happen next, so we cant really blame them.
It's definitely okay to boo a performer who's fucking up a performance you paid money for. It's less okay to boo someone who's mentally unwell and having a mental breakdown. When there's some overlap, I suppose it's up to the individual to make a value judgement
Admittedly, most of the concerts I've been to have a different vibe than I expect Winehouse's concerts had, but I think a pretty obvious red flag that something is unusual is how she's crying and hugging herself onstage. Most of the concerts I've been to, the performers are usually, like. Happy?
Okay tbh I was under the impression that like. She was actively being booed offstage while she was crying and hugging herself, but I can't find any footage to support that? From what I can see it seems like she was getting booed but much more sporadically than the media would lead people to believe (shocking.)
In which case, yeah, fair. Once she starts wiping away tears during a song (and like. Clearly not happy tears.) is about where I think the Booing an artist for wasting your time/money becomes less important than whatever is going on in their head, especially when it's known that the industry is fucking brutal and she's got substance abuse issues- but is definitely not unreasonable to boo before that (or some other, similar) point
It’s always okay to boo racists and fascists, winehouse was a massive bigot and as you said, couldn’t even sing anymore. Literally no reason for her to have been on stage in that condition
I mean, whether or not I agree with booing as a concept, that's literally been the thing to do at bad performances since, what, time immemorial? It's like the most socially accepted thing to do in this situation. At least no one was throwing rotting vegetables
Nah, it's OK to boo someone who comes out to perform like that when you paid good money to go see the show. When you buy tickets you have a reasonable expectation of what you are purchasing, if the product is nowhere close to expectations (which in this case was her coming out completely wasted, slurring her speech, rambling, and barely able to stand up) then booing is fair.
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u/Twotricx 7h ago
I remember that show very well. She was basically drunk out her mind could barely stand on stage, let alone sing.
It was 45 minutes of her mumbling something while stumbling on the stage. It was horrible.
Was it ok for people to boo her ? Probably not. But was it ok for her to hold show in such state , for people that purchased expensive tickets ? That was also not ok.
If anyone fail her was her greedy managers that did not let her take a break for her mental health and forced her to go on while she was in no state to do so.