What Is It About Men By Amy Winehouse - Songfacts

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What Is It About Menby Amy Winehouse

Album: Frank (2003) License This Song  lyricsartistfacts Play Video

Songfacts®:

This song co-written by Amy Winehouse is about the breakup of her parents' marriage. She was asked by Mojo magazine January 2008 why she would reveal such things in a Pop song. Winehouse replied: "I don't know what my mum feels about it, but I felt it was important to write that song. I was 9 or 10 when my dad left. My mum was upset every night, falling apart. I thought she was weak until I realized that my dad was the weak one, 'cos he couldn't make something work. My mum was the strong one."
Amy Winehouse's taxi driver father, Mitch, spoke to the BBC about an extramarital affair that he had with a work colleague, Jane, which carried on for almost a decade before he eventually left his family to move in with her. It was an open secret in the family home and Amy and her older brother Alex even had a special name for their father's mistress: 'Daddy's work wife.' After his daughter wrote this song, the taxi driver realized that the line in this song "All the s--t my mother went through" referred to his affair. Mitch said: "The children used to call Jane 'Daddy's work wife.' I did not leave home until Amy was ten, so the situation occurred for another eight or nine years before I left home. It was difficult. I should have left earlier, I should have left sooner. There was not really a negative response from Amy (when I left), but she definitely became a lot more independent. Perhaps deep down she felt her parents were splitting up, she could not rely on them to stay together and that it was about time she learned to look after herself. I thought Amy was over it pretty quickly - in fact it felt at the time Amy felt no effect at all. Maybe she could not articulate it in words, but she certainly did it with music."

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Lyrics to What Is It About Men
Amy Winehouse Artistfacts

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Comments: 2

Sadie from Atlanta, GaI think she's also talking about how in the end she realizes she's doing what her father did to her mother. She's cheating on someone she cares about.
Tiffany from Little Rock, ArPeople should really listen to and study this one, because it's one of Amy's more raw and realistic songs, and it gives us a glimpse into where her mistrust of men comes from. Her father was duplicitous, she became "the other woman" in a relationship with Blake when she got older, and she seems to feel that sex is the only thing she'll ever need from a man. To Amy, men can't be trusted to be true.

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