British singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead at her flat in north London at the age of 27.

The Grammy award-winning soul singer struggled with well-documented drink and drug addictions. Her death is being treated as unexplained.

Winehouse had been credited as an influence in the rise in popularity of female musicians and soul music, and also for revitalising British music. Winehouse’s distinctive style has made her a muse for fashion designers such as Karl Lagerfeld. The singer’s problems with drug and alcohol abuse, as well as self-destructive behaviour, were regular tabloid news from 2007 until her death.

Musical stylings: Amy caused a stir with her first album Frank in 2004, and followed it with Back To Black in 2006

Russell Brand writes a tribute for Amy Winehouse

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

Updated News:

An autopsy of British singer Amy Winehouse has not established the cause of her death at age 27, a coroner’s official said on Monday, July 25, 2011.  Histology and toxicology tests will be performed to help determine the cause of death, after the singer was found dead at her London home on Saturday. Those test results are expected in two weeks.

Les Grossman Tom Cruise MTV Movie Awards 2010 – Tom Cruise proved that he was a funny man but he also proved to be an even greater dancer at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, held at Universal Studios’ Gibson Amphitheatre on Sunday (June 6) in Universal City, California.
Cruise opened the show in full costume dressed as “mega mogul” Les Grossman who is known for his dirty mouth.
Grossman kicked things of saying that :
” I am the producer of this year’s MTV Movie Awards. Movies are a marriage of picture and sound. My job is to get them drunk and to f—, and the illegitimate baby they make is called entertainment.”

Full List of Winners

Best Movie: The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Best Female Performance: Kristen Stewart, New Moon
Best Male Performance: Robert Pattinson, New Moon
Best Breakout Star: Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Best Scared-as-Sh-t Performancne: Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer’s Body
Biggest Badass Star: Rain, Ninja Assassin
Best Comedic Performance: Zach Galifianakis, The Hangover
Best Villain: Tom Felton, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Best Kiss: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, New Moon
Best Fight: Beyoncé and Ali Larter, Obsessed
Best WTF Moment: Ken Jeong, The Hangover
Global Superstar: Robert Pattinson
Generation Award: Sandra Bullock

Janet Jackson on American Idol was the first performance were we see Janet in her new haircut last night. Jackson started out sweet and sultry with her 1993 single “Again” and her new song “Nothing” from Why Did I get Married Too? before launching into a hot rendition of her classic track “Nasty”.

Watching Janet Jackson on American Idol last night reminded us not only how much we miss Michael Jackson, but how fabulous his sister really is.

Jennifer Hudson are both hosting holiday specials on ABC. Oprah’s special is called “Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special” and Jennifer Hudson will light up “Jennifer Hudson: I’ll be Home for Christmas.”

“It hurts me so when I see people like, ‘Whatever, Christmas is just another day,’” the self-proclaimed “holiday fanatic” Jennifer told PEOPLE over the phone Friday. “I’m that person who’s going to go over there and get you into the holiday spirit. And that’s how I’ve always been.”

But according to reports from people.com, as excited as she is to share this Christmas with all her fans, there is one person in particular that Jennifer simply can’t wait to spend it with. And the person that I am talking about is her 4-month old son David Daniel Otunga Jr.

Ben Folds (Benjamin Scott), American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and the former frontman of the band Ben Folds Five, is one of the judges of The Sing-Off.

“The Sing-Off” is like “American Idol” for a cappella groups, but hosted by Nick Lachey. To the suggestion that a sizable chunk of the television-viewing public thinks the genre is – let’s just say it – corny, Folds says, “I think this competition might change some people’s minds. We’ve really mined the conventions in pop music: drums, bass, guitar, maybe keyboards. I’m a big fan of anything that has to be inventive, musically. This isn’t about who can sing the best, it’s about who can invent the best.’’

52 years old American musician, singer and entertainer Donny Osmond stay winner in the “Dancing With The Stars,” a Dancing Event of ABC television’s show held at Los Angeles on Tuesday night.

The winners are decided by the votes from viewers and a combination of scores by judges.

“I don’t have the physique of a [UFC fighter] Chuck Liddell,” Osmond said. “I don’t have the youth of an [singer] Aaron Carter. But what I do have is experience. And our strategy is simple — dance well.”

Osmond’s sister, Marie, had also competed in the show and got the third position at the fifth season, two years later.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him,” sister Marie Osmond told KTVX. “Bless his heart. But now I’m going to have to keep him humbled.”

Adam Lambert shocked the AMA audience with antics such as kissing a man and rubbing another man’s head in his crotch. While Adam Lambert’s heavy makeup and “unique” wardrobe are certainly enough to grab attention, Lambert took attention to the next level through his AMA perforance video. Now, people either love or loathe Adam Lambert.

Lambert told Rolling Stone, “It’s a shame because I think that there’s a double standard going on in the entertainment community right now. Female performers have been doing this for years — pushing the envelope about sexuality — and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out. It’s time to take risks, be a little more brave, time to open people’s eyes and if it offends them, then maybe I’m not for them.”

Adam Lambert AMA video youtube

The rumors have spread like fire all over the internet that 36 year old Rapper singer Eminem died! This news is not confirmed yet but Eminem’s false death reports first swirled August 16 this year. Now Tuesday morning fans are left asking … did Cyrus die?

Eminem car crash is all the result of a Yahoo page that is certainly fake. Here’s the news:

TOP STORIES – Rap Singer Eminem died this morning in a terrible car crash.The cause of this horrible accident was blamed for the cell phone that he was using when riding in his car.It is thought that he was not paying attention when he swerved into an oncoming truck.
He was brought to a hospital in critical condition, but he died from bleeding to death.”There was really nothing we could do to help him”said Dr. Adams who was taking care of Eminem at the time.We will always remember Eminem from his music and his words.MTV will be having a special memorial program for him.

“First it’s Pac then it’s Biggie then Eminem”said Snoop Dogg,another famous rap singer.

The 2009 “American Music Awards” airs live tonight at 7pm central time on ABC. The show opened with an extended performance by Janet Jackson. She sang a medley of her greatest songs, including hits like “Miss You Much,” “What Have You Done for Me Lately,” “If” and more. She also performed her newest song, “Make Me.” Then, she wrapped up with her 1997 hit, “Together Again.” Even though Janet didn’t directly mention Michael Jackson during the song, it seemed to pay tribute to her brother.

Here’s what has happened so far:

8:08: Paula Abdul takes the podium, reminding us that fans decide the winners of the AMAs.

8:10: The Black Eyed Peas win best pop/rock band, duo or group.

8:15: Rascal Flatts win best country band, duo or group.

8:17: Daughtry performs “Life After You.” It’s a typical guitar-heavy performance, no major frills. The song is good, though.

8:20: Shakira performs, opening her number with a step routinte. She’s accompanied by a leotard-clad step troupe. She sings “Give It Up to Me” while donning a slinky black getup. In its original form, the song features Lil Wayne, but he’s not here for this performance. The song is heavy on the pelvic thrusts, to say the least.

Yikes. I just lost my Internet connection. Sorry, guys. I blame it on Kanye West trying to sabotage a future Taylor Swift win.

Anyway, while I was struggling with the Internet, Keith Urban performed “Kiss a Girl” while wearing a glittery shirt and a pocket chain…yes, all in the same outfit. Then, Kelly Clarkson sang “Already Gone’ while accompanied by a small stringed orchestra. It was good, but I’m kind of craving the energy of her “Since U Been Gone” days.

8:44: Taylor Swift wins favorite female pop/rock artist. Did she really deserve to beat Beyonce and Lady Gaga? I don’t know. Anyway, Taylor’s not there, but she accepts the award via video from her tour.

8:46: Jay-Z and Alicia Keys sing a very classy version of “Empire State of Mind.” Maybe my favorite performance so far.

8:51: Green Day wins best alternative rock group.

8:58: Kate Hudson’s outfit is on the verge of a serious upper-body wardrobe malfunction.

8:59: Black Eyed Peas perform “Meet Me Halfway” and “Boom Boom Pow.” And then…a guitar bit from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Between robots, bright lights and Fergie’s skimpy tutu look, there’s a lot going on here.

9:06: Michael Jackon wins favorite male soul/R&B artist. It’s his 22nd AMA. Jermaine Jackson accepts, with his kids on stage. “Thank you so much, we love you Michael.”

9:13: Keith Urban wins favorite male country artist. It’s his first AMA.

9:14: “American Idol” winner Kris Allen takes the stage…as a presenter. Ouch. I wonder how he feels about the fact that runner-up Adam Lambert secured a spot as a performer?

9:15: Beyonce wins favorite female soul/R&B artist. She’s not there to accept. No video acceptance, either.

9:16: Rihanna performs “The Wait is Ova.” She’s wearing a weird white getup that involves spikes and holes. It even lights up. This one will likely divide fans…and non-fans. Does anyone else prefer “Russian Roulette”?

9:26: Carrie Underwood performs “Cowboy Casanova.” Her shorts/dress getup is a bit odd, but overall it’s an entertaining performance. Not too original, though.

9:30: Lady Gaga performs! She sings “Bad Romance” while wearing a flesh-colored bodysuit and a light-up mask and vest thing. Two minutes into the song, she’s crawling on the floor. Yes! Then, she smashes a giant wall of glass to climb into a space containing a piano. Her mask is now off, but the piano is on fire. Yes, real flames. She plays the piano and sings “Speechless.” So dramatic, so Gaga. She’s now smashing water bottles. The song concludes with giant flames bursting out of the piano.

9:35: Of course, top fan Perez Hilton raves about Gaga’s performance. He tells the audience there’s “so many divas on one stage and I haven’t gotten into a fight with any of them yet.” The night is young, dude.

9:41: Mary J. Blige performs “I Am.” It’s vocally solid, but a bit boring. OK, maybe a LOT boring.

9:45: Time for the T-Mobile Breakthrough Artist award. It goes to country act Gloriana. Huh? How did they beat Lady Gaga? Something tells me there was some serious mom texting going on. It’s the award that lets viewers vote during the show, after all.

9:47: Gloriana accepts the award, poking a little fun at themselves. A member asks audience members to raise their hands if they just asked who Gloriana is.

9:48: Jennifer Lopez performs her new single, “Louboutins.” There’s a boxing ring setup, but not much creativity beyond that. It looks like she falls mid-dance, but plays it off. Not very well, though. Overall, the whole thing is very underwhelming. So much advance hype, so much disappointment. I’m craving some Adam Lambert.

9:58: Whitney Houston named International Artist of the Year.

9:59: Whitney Houston performs “Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” She looks and sounds really good. My viewing partner and I agree: You can safely call this a comeback. One of the night’s best performances. The audience is on their feet and guests like Reba McEntire are crying.

10:02: Quick Twitter update from my stalking: Celebrity gossip blogger says via Twitter that he blames T-Mobile for Gaga losing the breakthrough artist category.

10:05: Whitney accepts her award

10:07: Another quick Twitter update from my stalking: When Perez Hilton came on camera after Gaga’s performance, he made a crack about bonding with Derek Hough from “Dancing with the Stars” in the bathroom. On Twitter, Derek’s sister Julianne recently tweeted, “ok you know I love you perez!! But dude… My brother??? Really??? Not the way he roles!! Totally Messed up!!!”

10:12: Taylor Swift wins favorite female country artist. She accepts again via video.

10:13: Michael Jackson wins favorite pop/rock male artist. Jermaine Jackson is back to accept. This is Michael’s 23rd AMA. He breaks an AMA record. “The message that Michael had will live on forever,” Jermaine says.

10:15: Alicia Keys performs “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart.” It’s a pretty good performance that concludes with her playing a piano on a revolving podium. Another pretty memorable one.

10:25: Eminem and 50 Cent perform “Crack a Bottle.” There are bits of a Drake song, but Drake is not on stage. Also, the performance is possibly taped. Lots of censoring.

10:30: Timbaland performs his new song, “The Morning After,” featuring vocals by SoShy and Nelly Furtado. The tune is kind of catchy, but I’m not terribly impressed. AMA fatigue is setting in. Hopefully the hype surrounding Adam Lambert’s upcoming performance is warranted.

10:38: Green Day performs “21 Guns.” The band rocks out, obviously, but their setup is a bit predictable.

10:45: Jay-Z wins best male hip-hop artist.

10:52: Taylor Swift wins artist of the year, beating Michael Jackson for the title. Including the awards not given on air, Taylor won five AMAs this year. “Music has never been ultimately about competition,” she says. She tells fans, “You have given me so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.”

10:55: Adam Lambert performs his new single, “For Your Entertainment.” Oh wow. This is extreme. People are on leashes. And — WOW! — Adam is pushing somebody’s face into his crotch! Yowza. I have never seen a camera move away so quickly in my life. Dancers are surrounding Adam in dominatrix gear! Adam has his tongue in somebody’s mouth! And his vocals? Well, they’re typical Adam Lambert. Lots of high, shrieky notes. Just what we saw out of him on “Idol.” But wow…the crotch nestling might have been a bit too extreme.