Three years ago today, the world lost the legendary singer Amy Winehouse. She was found dead on July 23, 2011 in her London home from accidental alcohol poisoning -- a "death by misadventure" as the coroner ruled. In the years since her untimely passing at age 27, artists and industry leaders have examined the influence she had on music and her legacy as an artist. Below are quotes from artists who were either influenced by Winehouse or touched by her work.
1. Adele
"Amy paved the way for artists like me and made people excited about British music again whilst being fearlessly hilarious and blasé about the whole thing. I don't think she ever realized just how brilliant she was and how important she is, but that just makes her even more charming."
2. Lady Gaga
"Amy [Winehouse] changed pop music forever, I remember knowing there was hope, and feeling not alone because of her. She lived jazz, she lived the blues."
"I will always have a very deep love for Amy Winehouse. Because of Amy, very strange girls like me go to prom with very good-looking guys. She's a different kind of woman. I don't believe that what I do is very digestible, and somehow Amy was the flu for pop music. And everybody got a little bit of the flu and got over it, and fell in love with Amy Winehouse. And now, when more flu comes along, it's not so unbearable."
3. Diplo
"She had a voice like no one else in our generation."
4. Rihanna
"[Amy] made a MAJAH impression on this industry and throughout the world, in such a short space of time...too short!"
5. Lana Del Rey
"I believe in Amy Winehouse. I know she's not with us anymore but I believe she was who she was and in that way she got it right."
6. Lily Allen
"[Amy] was too damn interesting for her own good. What [Amy] had to deal with was 10 times anything I had to deal with. She'd sold a hell of a lot more albums than me, and there was a lot more interest in her. There were people outside her home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. [But] I know what that was like on a much smaller level, and I felt trapped."
7. Mark Ronson
"There's so many people that would love to hear the table scraps of what she left because it was so good that it was better than most people's albums."
8. Usher
"A voice like that comes once in a lifetime."
9. Tony Bennett
"What I love about Amy Winehouse is that, of all the singers since the Beatles, you automatically check everyone out who's a lot younger, but there's been such a big walk away from jazz. Some people think that anyone could sing jazz, but they can't. It's a gift of learning how to syncopate but it's also a spirit that you're either born with or you're not. And Amy was born with that spirit. ...The fact that she died at 27 years old is just horrible to me. If she had lived, she would've been right up there with Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. It's just a tragedy."
10. Nas
"Instantly her voice just caught me. She was hilarious. She would make you laugh. To her, music came so easy. She was so nonchalant about [putting out albums] that it reminded me of myself."
