Claire Kilroyon finally saying yes to Amy Winehouse

I haven't been doing my homework, music-wise, these past few years. I am the first to admit this. It all went wrong with the rave scene, which turned friends into the Infected from 28 Days Later.

I watched a young fella doing his rave hand signals whilst on his back in the mud at a festival, unaware that he had fallen. Unaware, also, that I was standing over him, marvelling at this sad display. Somewhere in my head, a door slammed.

Anything with the words "ho" or "bitch" made the mortice lock click into place. Snoop Doggy Dogg's porn video contributed little. One day I realised I was listening almost exclusively to music by dead people.

This wasn't a criterion, just a pattern. Popular music had become a foreign language I'd once spoken, but hadn't kept up. I had forgotten the basic stuff, like how to say: "Excuse me, where is the record store?"

The few forays I did make to the music shop were often unrewarding. I see how these mistakes are made with books. Stick a particular cover on, and people will buy it thinking it's something else.

Girl With a Pearl Earringis an example. Period romance dressed up as literary fiction. Ditto music. I came home with stuff that didn't stand up to more than three listenings.

The Strokes' first album looks like The Velvet Underground wrote it - a patent leather gloved hand pats a bare female rump. It's not a particularly bad album, but it's hardly The Ramones either. I was left shaking out the cereal box looking for the free toy, realising that I'd been gypped.

I don't appreciate this plethora of ersatz performers pretending to be something they're not. They are proof, if more was needed, that the world is a vacuous place. I knew not to fall for the whole Amy Winehouse thing. I saw that one coming a mile off. She's not dead, for a start.

You couldn't fool me with the mouthy attitude, the irresistible tunes, the vulnerable persona, the outstanding musicality. Back to Blackwould turn into a pumpkin the minute I inserted it into my CD player. Like herself and Ian Paisley, I said "No, no, no". And then, like Ian, I said "Oh, alright".

What changed was that I read an interview in which she named Catch-22and Pigtopiaas her favourite novels. Intriguing taste. Was it possible that she was the real thing? My editor, who is fluent in contemporary music, or rock, or - Jesus, I don't even know what to call it - edited Pigtopia.

So I asked him. Turns out he thinks Winehouse rocks. I purchased Back to Blackand hit the jackpot. Every album that aspires to the condition of becoming a classic must contain at least one song that makes you hit rewind over and over. Back to Black's title track does just that, being as elegiac a narrative as a good novel.

Plus you can dance to the rest.

Claire Kilroy's second novel, Tenderwire, is out now in paperback on Faber