Winehouse gets help?

What happened

Troubled British soul singer Amy Winehouse checked into a drug rehabilitation program in London on Thursday after a tabloid newspaper posted video online showing the troubled British soul singer allegedly smoking crack cocaine. "She has come to understand that she requires specialist treatment to continue her ongoing recovery from drug addiction,” Winehouse’s record company, Universal Music Group, said. (ABC News)

What the commentators said

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

“On her best days, Amy Winehouse is a mess,” said Josh Tyrangiel in Time.com. “On her worst days—and there have been plenty of late—Winehouse looks a safe bet for an early grave.” She’s canceled a tour, been photographed wandering befuddled through the streets in a fire-engine red bra, and her in-laws have even called for a boycott of her music. “Nothing inspires scorn like wasted fame,” but, remember, Winehouse “knows who she is” and expresses her torment in “a way that is often beautiful and meaningful to others.”

Singing about not wanting to go into rehab is fine, said Stuart Heritage in the blog Hecklerspray, but being videotaped “inhaling every last atom of crack in the universe through a glass pipe” is a strong argument for checking into a clinic. Winehouse already has “one unsuccessful rehab stint under her belt.” If she’s just giving it another chance “so the police will get off her back,” she’ll be back in the tabloids in no time.

Who knows, said the blog PopSugar, maybe Winehouse is serious this time. But you have to wonder, with her record label promising she’ll be better in time to make at appearance at next month’s Grammys, where she’s nominated in six categories. “I'm no doctor, but considering the Grammy Awards are just a little more than two weeks away, it seems a little soon for her to be planning big celebratory trips to LA,” but hopefully she’s “getting the help she definitely needs.”

Winehouse apparently doesn’t recognize that she’s a danger to herself, said Kimberley Dadds in DigitalSpy. That may explain why her father says he tried to get her commited to an institution to force her to get help, although he was turned down.