Customer Reviews

Pumps / Help Yourself

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Released as the fourth and final single from Frank, Pumps is a witty dismissal of gold diggers who use their looks to get them through life. "With your big empty purse/Every week it gets worse/At least your breasts cost more than hers.... Don't be mad at me/Cuz you're pushing thirty/And your old tricks no longer work," Amy sniffs. I grew to dislike the song at first, but now I'm swindled by it's charm. Nice video with Amy walking the streets, microphone in hand and pumps on her own feet, calling out the very women the song's dedicated to.

The jazzy (and pre-Rehab) Help Yourself is a compassionate plea for an older boyfriend to quit his drug addiction and clean up his life. "You might be twenty-five but in my mind/I see you at sixteen years old most the time/And I'm just a child and you're full grown/And no I'm nothing like I've ever known.... I can't help ya if you won't help yourself!" The music is reminiscent of something from the 30's or 40's. It's gorgeous. As is the live AOL Session of the jazz standard (There Is) No Greater Love. "There is no greater love/Than what I feel for you/No sweeter song, no heart so true...."

"F*** Me Pumps" and "Help Yourself" are two great examples of the repertoire of Amy Winehouse that was featured on her debut album. While the first one [rather graphically] depicts a day in the life of a gold digger at the club and is self-explanatory, "Help Yourself" is about Amy Winehouse talking to and coming to terms with her substance abuser boyfriend's problem (quite a different turn from her "Rehab" identity of today, where someone might be singing the same words to her!). Very soulful and catchy........

On occasion, God will grace an individual with gifts almost beyond measure and although things start off well enough, at some point, the wheels come off. We are currently seeing the wheels wobble and the cart heading for the ditch with Amy Winehouse. She has a voice I haven't been able to capture in words, and a personal life that is so rife with self-destruction and psychological co-dependency that disaster can't possibly be far off. Her boyfriend (Blake Fielder-Civil) is akin to kerosene near the flame and reading of her cutting herself with the words "I love Blake" while being interviewed for SPIN magazine made me want to call Bellview and initiate an intervention.

Very sad. I hope she gets some help, pulls herself together, gets rid of additions in her life, realizes that using the word 'f**k' every 10 seconds doesn't make you bad, it justs makes you sound low-class and I hope she hangs around long enough to sing the title song for the next "James Bond" film as planned in 2008.