An exclusive EcoSalon playlist that’s better without a cover.

Here are ten tastefully done cover songs, covered so well, that clothing is optional.

❤² by BehindTheWalk-In

Download the entire playlist for free here.

Tracklist:

1. La Isla Bonita – Jonathan Wilson
2. Be My Baby – UFO Club
3. Doctor – Atlas Sound
4. What to do – Meat Puppets
5. I Only Have Eyes for You – Summer Camp
6. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow – Amy Winehouse
7. Into The Black – Chromatics
8. Come Talk To Me – Bon Iver
9. Your Love is Forever – Band of Horses
10. Runaway – Oberhofer

Like what you hear? Check out our entire 10 Songs series. 

Image: Sarah Cairncross

The post 10 Cover Songs to Listen to Naked appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhere celebrity becomes conscious.

“Amy Winehouse’s musical legacy will live on” one headline trumpeted in the days after her death at age 27. Winehouse was a true talent and a masterful artist. She was also a known user who most likely passed away as a result of her drug addiction. Her death has brought on a myriad of diverse reactions from people, from pity to despair to cynicism to cruelty. When we react en masse to a celebrity death, what are we really saying about ourselves?

In recent years, drug addiction as portrayed by the media usually follows this line. First, we watch the paparazzi document a fall outside of a night club. Or maybe there’s a stumble in a bar. This brings on blog postings and online rants about bad behavior or domestic abuse or criminal intentions. Concerts or television shows are cancelled. Someone gets fired. And when we ultimately wake up to a headline sharing the death of said celebrity, most of us sigh. We knew it was coming. We were just powerless to stop it.

When anyone young dies, it’s terribly tragic. When anyone young and talented dies, it’s just as terribly tragic. Winehouse made no secret of her struggle with addiction. As the lyrics to perhaps her most famous song “Back to Black” read, “I love you much, it’s not enough/You love blow and I love puff/And life is like a pipe/And I’m a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside.” So when for all intents and purposes it looks like “they killed themselves” from a drug overdose, we have an opinion. Boy, do we ever.

Some of us react like proper grandmothers who can’t admit the darker aspects of life. At least, People Magazine did when they trumpeted that no drugs were found at the scene of Winehouse’s death. Maybe there weren’t. But why the pearl-clutching insistence of telling us so?

Others were cynical. As greenwhichavenue17 wrote on Gawker, “Are we supposed to be sad about Amy Whinehouse? She had the life expectancy of a peach.”

Some insisted on keeping the humor wagon rolling. On Twitter, @ Lord_Voldemort7 shared “#amywinehouse has died. The cause of death is unknown but there are rumors Mrs. Weasley mistook her for Bellatrix Lestrange…”

Others were angry: @HCapers tweeted, “These folks are so ignorant speaking of#amywinehouse death. Yes she was a crack head but she was also a human being! Show some respect!!”

Others were celebratory about her music: @KatieinTO on Twitter shared, “Back on Black on repeat today, such an awesome album.”

Perhaps AnnV6 on Gawker summed it up best: “After what happened to Amy, the stories about Lindsay [Lohan, partying in a bar] and reaction to them just gives me the chills. This is why addiction is such a powerful and difficult disease, it’s the only disease people are allowed to be mad at you for having.”

After all, addiction by our own government’s definition is a mental illness. As the National Institute for Drug Abuse writes, “Addiction changes the brain in fundamental ways, disturbing a person’s normal hierarchy of needs and desires and substituting new priorities connected with procuring and using the drug.”

What do all these comments have in common? Likely, it is that they routed in personal experience, subconscious or otherwise. Some statistics show that “one of every eight Americans has a significant problem with alcohol or drugs” while “by age eighteen, almost 12 percent of all young people are illicit drug users.” You would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t struggled with addiction on some level, be it through their own experience or that of a loved one.

In the end, our collective response reflects our own frustrations that we couldn’t do more. That we saw it coming. As if we are, in fact, part of Winehouse’s collective family. So then, let’s leave the final word on her death with her father. As Mitch Winehouse shared, his daughter had recently told him “Dad, I’ve had enough, I can’t stand the look on you and the family’s faces anymore.” Sadly, it’s a look the reacting public perhaps knows too well.

This is the latest installment in Katherine Butler’s column, Shade Grown Hollywood, where celebrity becomes conscious. “Shade grown” refers literally to shade grown coffee, a farming method that “incorporates principles of natural ecology to promote natural ecological relationships.” Shade Grown is our sustainable twist on Hollywood.

The post Shade Grown Hollywood: The Aftermath of Amy Winehouse appeared first on EcoSalon.