Lioness: Hidden Treasures

Background

Lioness: Hidden Treasures was announced for release on 31 October 2011 via The Sun and Winehouse's official website. Island Records co-president Ted Cockle has emphasised that Lioness is not in any way the planned follow-up to Winehouse's album Back to Black (2006). In fact, only two songs intended for the planned follow-up had been completed prior to her death. The album is a compilation of recordings from before the release of Winehouse's debut album, Frank, in 2002, up to music she was working on in 2011.

Producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson collaborated, compiling the album with the consent of the Winehouse family. They worked together on listening back to thousands of hours of vocals by Winehouse. Remi commented on the project, "When I listened back you would hear some of the conversations in between—that was emotional. It has been hard, but it has also been an amazing thing. Amy was a gifted girl. I believe she has left something beyond her years. She has put a body of work together that will inspire an unborn generation. I'm blessed to be part of that process, to have known that person and to continue her legacy with this album." Remi told the NME that the album would not lead to "a Tupac situation", referring to Tupac Shakur, in whose name seven posthumous studio albums have been released since his death in 1996. He stated, "A lot of people, through the other antics that were going on with her personally, didn’t get that she was at the top of what she did. Coming to Miami was her escape from all of that, and her writing process could document her life, whether it was recording the pain or the loneliness or the humour. It makes no sense for these songs to be sitting on a hard drive, withering away."

Two tracks from Lioness: Hidden Treasures received world exclusive plays on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra on 3 November 2011. The Chris Moyles Show aired the first play of "Our Day Will Come", while DJ Twin B broadcast the world premiere of "Like Smoke", which features Nas. The album cover was shot by Canadian rock singer-songwriter Bryan Adams in 2007.

Singles

"Body and Soul", Winehouse's final studio recording and a duet with Tony Bennett, was released as a single on 14 September 2011, in commemoration of what would have been Winehouse's 28th birthday. It was released as the first single from Lioness: Hidden Treasures and Tony Bennett's Duets II album. Profits from the release of the single were donated to the Amy Winehouse Foundation. "Our Day Will Come" was released as the second single taken from the album. It was released on 5 December 2011 according to BBC Radio 2, where it was named their "Record of the Week". The song was also added to the BBC Radio 1 playlist on 2 November, entering the C-list.

Critical reception

Lioness: Hidden Treasures received generally mixed to positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 65, based on 28 reviews. Q called it "an admirable tribute if frequently deafened by the echo of its tragic catalyst." Jon Pareles of The New York Times commented that the album "ekes out all it can from the archives" and found it to be "just the scraps of what might have been." Pitchfork Media's Andrew Ryce wrote in his review, "There's little on Lioness: Hidden Treasures that sounds throwaway, or like it should have never been released; but there's equally little that sounds absolutely essential." AllMusic editor John Bush felt that "only the songwriting and prevalence of covers or 'original versions' reveal that this is a posthumous collection", crediting Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson for making the album "strikingly uniform".

Commercial performance

Lioness: Hidden Treasures debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart with 194,966 copies sold in its first week, the biggest first-week sales of Winehouse's career, as well as the fourth biggest first-week sales of 2011. It was certified double platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on 17 December 2011, and had sold 750,000 copies by July 2012. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 114,000 units, making it Winehouse's highest-debuting album in the United States. As of July 2012, it had sold 423,000 copies in the US.

The album topped the charts in Austria, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland, while reaching the top five in Canada, New Zealand and several European countries, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Lioness: Hidden Treasures had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide by the end of 2011, becoming the 11th best-selling album of 2011, as well as the fourth best-selling album by a British artist. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) certified the album platinum in late 2011, denoting sales in excess of one million copies in Europe.