Singer Winehouse Found Dead in London, Police Say

Juan Medina/Reuters

 Amy Winehouse, the Grammy-award winning singer who has battled addiction problems for years, was found dead on Saturday at her apartment in London, the police said. She was 27. 

The police were called by an ambulance to Ms. Winehouse’s apartment in Camden, North London, shortly before 4:05 pm, the police said in a statement. Ms. Winehouse was pronounced dead at the scene.

“Enquiries continue into the circumstances of the death,” the police said. “At this early stage it is being treated as unexplained.”

Ms. Winehouse canceled her European tour last month after a performance in Serbia, where she was booed by the audience for stumbling around the stage and forgetting her lyrics. The British singer has been repeatedly treated for drug and alcohol abuse and stayed in the Priory, a London clinic that treats addiction issues, before touring Europe.

Ms. Winehouse, the daughter of a London taxi driver, rose to fame with her 2006 album “Back to Black” and the song “Rehab,” in which she sings “They tried to make me go to rehab/I said no, no, no.” She was best known for her jazz and blues songs, most of which she wrote herself. Ms. Winehouse’s first album, “Frank,” was released in 2003, when she was 19.

But she was also equally famous for the front pages of British tabloids that showed her looking disheveled and wide-eyed. Many fans and her family repeatedly raised concerns about her well-being and urged her to break up the relationship with her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil.

Ms. Winehouse hit a low when Mr. Fielder-Civil, whose name she had tattooed on her chest, went to jail for perverting the cause of justice after a bar fight. He and Ms. Winehouse divorced in 2009.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2008, Ms. Winehouse said: “To be honest, my husband’s away, I’m bored, I’m young. I felt like there was nothing to live for. It’s just been a low ebb.”

The same year, The Sun, a tabloid, printed a photo of her in which she was using a glass pipe to smoke what the newspaper said was crack.

Since then, Ms. Winehouse constantly tried to get back onstage and perform, but her health continued to suffer. In 2009, she was treated for severe dehydration at a St. Lucia hospital after collapsing at a villa there.

Ms. Winehouse is not the first singer who died at the age of 27. Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones were the same age.

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.