EXCLUSIVE: Despite her sad death at the age of just 27, Amy Winehouse’s legacy still endures – and remarkable new images show how she might look if she had lived
Amy Winehouse died 15 years ago today
Today (July 23) marks 15 years since the tragic death of platinum-selling soul icon Amy Winehouse. Found dead in her Camden home at just 27, the Back to Black star would today be approaching her 43rd birthday.
Artificial intelligence imaging software Midjourney has now imagined what she would look like were she still alive. In one, the star stares frankly at the viewer with a truculent expression, showing the defiant nature that typified her later years.
A second recreation of how Amy might have looked today shows her signature tumbling raven hair showing just a few traces of grey and her cheekbones still razor-sharp. A third image shows the star, who was a regular on comedy panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, pouting playfully, as if about to unleash one of the bone-dry quips for which she was famed. It comes after AI also imagined what Elvis Presley would have looked like on his 91st birthday.
The BBC’s Garry Mulholland called Amy “the pre-eminent vocal talent of her generation” and there’s little doubt that, had she lived, she would still be a major force in pop. Although Amy had attended the Brit School and was originally managed by Pop Idol creator Simon Fuller alongside the likes of S Club 7 and Gareth Gates, Amy’s singular talent was rooted in jazz and classic 1960s girl-group ballads.
Music journalist Caroline Sullivan, author of a best-selling biography of Taylor Swift, told the Daily Star: “Amy was the voice of her generation and there’s no doubt that, if she had lived, her records would still be dominating the charts.”
Amy would have been 42 in 2026
Amy only released two albums in her short career. 2004’s Frank has been certified quadruple platinum while the hit-packed follow-up Back To Black, released towards the end of 2006, was the UK’s best-selling album of 2007, selling 1.85 million copies.
On this sad anniversary, many comments on social media from lovers of her music express the same sentiment: that Amy’s passing left people wondering how much more she would have contributed musically. One fan wrote that her death “leaves us forever wondering how much more she would have given us musically.”
While Amy is best known for for her inimitable contralto voice, she was also a singular, inventive guitarist. Fellow-star Pete Doherty told Music Radar: “I’ve actually sat in a room with her and a guitar, watching those tiny hands finding all these weird jazz chords. And her strumming patterns… crazy, off-kilter timings. She made it look so effortless.”
The AI-created images suggest Amy would have stuck with her singular look
Fifteen years after her death, people are still imagining the records she never made and the artist she might have become. Her songs, in particular those on Back to Black, chronicle a complex and tumultuous love-life that both energised and sometimes hampered her creativity.
The troubled star was known to have had problems with drugs and alcohol, but her brother Alex said in 2013 that he believed an eating disorder had been the primary cause of her death. “She suffered from bulimia very badly,” he said. That’s not a revelation — you knew just by looking at her.
She has been an inspiration to a whole new generation of artists
“She would have died eventually, the way she was going, but what really killed her was the bulimia … I think that it left her weaker and more susceptible. Had she not had an eating disorder, she would have been physically stronger.”
While Amy was emotionally fragile, she was staunchly protective of her friends.
Today, her greatest legacy is the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which has helped thousands of young people to feel supported and informed, so that they are better able to manage their emotional wellbeing and make informed choices around things that can affect their lives.