Matthew D'Ancona: Why I despair at this grotesque public downfall

Amy Winehouse was born in Southgate, a sleepy north London suburb etched into the nation's literary landscape by the poet Stevie Smith. Apt, really. For, beholding the soul singer's desperate decline in the past few weeks, especially the photographs of her pitifully skeletal, bikini-clad frame, scarred by tattoos and self-inflicted cuts, on the beach in St Lucia, I have been reminded of Smith's most famous line: "not waving but drowning".

There is something more than usually grotesque about this slow-motion downfall being played out daily in the media. When Winehouse's straight-to-karaoke single "Rehab" was released last October, it seemed that the MP3 generation had found its own Nancy Sikes, a downloadable down-and-out with a spectacular hairdo and the make-up of a tavern queen.

It was all supposed to be so post-modern. Like Eminem, she would make her career itself the subject of her songs: her drunken exploits, her dance with oblivion, the hassle from the record companies. To the red-tops she was the "Camden Caner", tactically out of control when it suited her image, strategically in control of it all as she headed inexorably for No 1. Would such an awesome woman ever surrender to something like rehab? No, no, no.

But the joke – if it ever was a joke – has gone horribly sour. Her health has declined with her weight, tour dates have been cancelled, and a binge this month allegedly involving heroin, cocaine, ketamine, vodka and scotch ended – not surprisingly – in hospitalisation. She has tried rehab and fled after five days. There have been punch-ups and incidents of self-harm.

Worst of all are the eyes, which look like tiny windows into a one-woman abyss. The jolly soap opera of pub brawls and off licence pranks has become a frame-by-frame car crash. The vultures circle over the hunched figure of this deeply damaged woman. The "stupid club" of which Kurt Cobain's mother spoke mournfully after his death seems to be preparing Winehouse's membership papers.

At her side in all of this is her appalling husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, an addict and enabler who makes Nancy Spungen look like Mother Teresa. Worse, his parents and her father have been fighting a shameful proxy battle on the airwaves, publicly bickering over the best way of forcing the couple to clean up. Should the public boycott Amy's records? And why didn't the Civils (Mum and Dad) turn up to such and such a meeting? Hmm? Everyone in both families claims to mean well, and seems quite happy to talk at length to just about anyone about just how well they mean. There are many ways of getting one's 15 minutes of fame, but this is one of the lowest I have come across.

Rehab, of course, is now one of the Stations of the Celebrity Cross. For Britney, Li-Lo and a generation of lesser stars, a few days in an exclusive clinic has become almost de rigueur, a few psychological notches up from a fashionable spa treatment. And there are plenty who will look at the beehive catastrophe that is Amy Winehouse and think: so what? You reap what you sow.

Me? I think it's a crying shame. Not out of pious altruism, but actually a much more selfish motive, which is a punter's musical enthusiasm. You see, as anyone who has listened to Back to Black, her second album, or Frank, its lesser predecessor, will know, Winehouse is, quite simply, one of the best soul singers of all time.

Play "Love is a Losing Game" or "Me & Mr Jones" or "(There Is) No Greater Love" and say it isn't so. The Voice – it deserves to be capitalised – is of a sort that comes along once in a generation, a miracle that bewitches, infiltrates the heart and defies emotional gravity. It is ragged, smoky, unkempt, but that is part of its majesty. In the age of The X-Factor, it is rare to find such raw talent in the charts. Right now, she is without equal.

"She was just unbelievable," said the great John Hammond of his discovery of the 17-year-old Billie Holiday in a speakeasy on 133rd Street in 1933 (he also discovered Aretha Franklin). Amy Winehouse is unbelievable, too, and has the chance to sit alongside Aretha, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald and Minnie Ripperton as one of the greats. But to get close to fulfilling her promise she should be extending her range, playing different venues, experimenting with different forms. Nina Simone recorded nine albums in the early 1960s. It is easy to be a celebrity; much tougher to become a legend – and even tougher when you are subjected to remorseless scrutiny. All these women faced adversity – in the case of Etta James, a decade-long heroin addiction. But none did so in an age such as ours when every setback, every private horror, every weakness is recorded and amplified in real time.

Winehouse's collaboration on her last album with the producer Mark Ronson was a triumph. She should be choosing her next musical partner, asking herself who can push her to even greater heights. She is good enough to have half a century of singing ahead of her.

We ought to be cherishing this exceptional talent and relishing its future. Instead, the spectacle of a great career in its infancy has become a gruesome national debate about life expectancy. "I died a hundred times," the lady sang. Yes, Amy, but the crowd want even more. Back to black, indeed.

The writer is editor of The Spectator. This article is based on a post on www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse