Amy Winehouse: Her Final Days

“I have this dream to be very famous,” Winehouse wrote in a school essay when she was 12.

When Amy Winehouse passed away on July 23, many jumped to the conclusion that the she’d overdosed after a drug binge.

“I would rather you did the whole interview about my hair…that’s my secret weapon,” the singer dryly told WHO in Los Angeles in 2007.

But what she was really doing, say sources, was surprisingly low-key: She laid low at her London home, spent time with her mother, and had a routine doctor’s visit. The singer’s boyfriend Reg Traviss told The Sun that Winehouse was “full of life and so upbeat recently,” and was busy planning her outfit for a friend’s wedding that weekend.

“It’s never gonna be butterflies and sunsets,” Winehouse told WHO in 2007.

In fact, while the toxicology results may not be available for weeks, those who knew her say she was much more than a party girl. “She spent most days at home writing,” says one friend.

“I’m sure I will sink lower at some point,” the Grammy-award winner told WHO after conceding she was “messed up” when she wrote her breakthrough album, Back to Black.

Beneath the disheveled beehive and heavy eyeliner was a slyly hilarious potty-mouth who loved to cook. “Amy Was a sparkly character” says Sarah Hurley, landlady of the Good Mixer, one of Winehouse’s favourite pubs.

For more on Winehouse and her final days - as well as rare childhood photos of the singer – pick up this week’s must-have Special Tribute Issue of WHO, on newsstands Friday.