Amy Winehouse producer Salaam Remi: 'New album helps family heal'

Salaam Remi has said that Amy Winehouse's posthumous album Lioness: Hidden Treasures has helped her family heal.

The record is released on December 5, four months after Winehouse was found dead at her Camden home at the age of 27.



Remi told Billboard: "They didn't know if they could listen to it. But as the songs were playing they just started smiling. Like, 'She wrote this? When did she do this? What happened?'

"I felt they spent so much time chasing her around, they didn't realise how gifted and talented Amy was. Not just when she passed at 27 but at 18 when I first met her."

He added: "It made everyone that knew her feel so much better about her passing, and her life as well.

"This record is about balancing out all of the bull in things that may have just been uncool, and saying 'this person existed'."

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"This is her musical legacy," Remi said. "She left behind inspiration. These songs are one thing, but this is gonna inspire people."

The producer, who worked on Winehouses's Frank and Back To Black, previously said that Lioness: Hidden Treasures "exists on its own merits" and only needed two weeks of polishing.

Island Records this week confirmed that it would not release around 12 further unfinished songs that Winehouse had worked on.

Remi added to Billboard: "There were a lot of things she wrote and laid down that haven't been released. But it's not like there are eight albums worth of material we can continue on for the next ten years."

Watch the Tony Bennett & Amy Winehouse 'Body and Soul' music video below