Universal Music boss destroyed Amy Winehouse demos: 'It was a moral thing'

 By 
Hillary Busis
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Just days ago, the internet was captivated by a grainy clip of the late Amy Winehouse showing off her powerful pipes at the tender age of 14. And there's more archival footage where that came from in Amy, a new documentary that charts the soul singer's rise and fall.

Just don't expect the movie to be followed by a slew of posthumous audio releases. David Joseph, Universal Music UK's chairman and CEO -- also credited as an executive producer on Amy -- has made it clear that Winehouse's demos will never see the light of day.

Why? Because he destroyed them.

[seealso URL="amy-winehouse-trailer/"]

Joseph did, at least, have a good reason for taking such drastic action. “It was a moral thing,” the exec told Billboard. “Taking a stem" -- a partial mix -- "or a vocal is not ­something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.”

It's probably for the best; posthumous releases have a tendency to be disappointing, especially when they're cobbled together from bits and pieces of unfinished tracks. For proof, look no further than Winehouse's final album: 2011's Lioness: Hidden Treasures, which received mixed reviews.

The gist, as published by the New York Times: "Had she survived, Winehouse might have had new insights into private turmoil, and a voice with eloquent scars. Lioness is just the scraps of what might have been."

Amy hits theaters in the U.S. July 3.

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