Holly Cosgrove is used to being told she looks exactly like Amy Winehouse – but even she admits the resemblance can be a little alarming.
The Amy tribute act, who performs as Absolute Amy, has gone viral thanks to her uncanny ability to transform into the Rehab star, with stunned viewers claiming she looks like a ‘ghost’ or even a reincarnation.
Revealing to Metro that ‘a lot of people’ have said her likeness of the late music icon is terrifying, she added: ‘[But] I don’t see it myself.
‘You look at yourself in the mirror and you think, “It’s just me”.
‘But then you put on the whole shebang, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, okay, fair enough”.’
It’s incredible what a bold winged liner, black beehive hair and Amy’s familiar dress sense can do. But there’s more to it than that.
Holly’s vocal tone is a dead ringer for the late singer, something that was a mix of natural talent, similar influences, and a lot of hard work.
‘Amy’s very much got her own modern take on that jazz style of singing,’ she explained. ‘She really studied those singers.
‘Before I knew about Amy, I was learning to sing when I was a kid, and I’d be listening to these sorts of singers, and I’d be doing the same inflexions.’
While their foundations were similar, Holly still had to study the intricacies of Amy to nail that performance.
It’s paid off, with one video of her performance reaching over 1million views across Instagram and TikTok, with thousands of comments.
‘Amy would approve for sure’
Fans declared the similarity was ‘scary’, as one viewer said they ‘thought this was an old video of Amy.’
‘Outstanding voice and look…..Amy would approve for sure!!!’ praised Jase while Aron declared: ‘Let’s re do the biopic with you’.
Holly laughed, revealing she was actually not performing as Amy when they were likely casting for Back to Black film, with promo launching around the same time as her first clips on social media.
‘It was quite a strange alignment,’ she shared. ‘Amy is in the collective consciousness right now in a big way.’
Outside of being a tribute act, the singer-songwriter is the frontwoman for Fable, a band with a trip-hop sound more akin to 90s group Portishead.
That jazz influence is still there, but with a much rockier guitar-led edge.
She jokingly described herself as a ‘penniless artist’, making her living as a musician and songwriter and signed to a small independent label.
That’s all changed now that Absolute Amy has ‘unintentionally’ become Holly’s full-time job, with a tour around the UK currently on.
She’s set to perform in Shoreditch on May 3, before gigs in places like Liverpool, Dublin, Brighton, and Sheffield later this year.
The shows are filled with people from all generations, with parents and grandparents taking their kids to a concert they’d sadly never see otherwise.
‘It’s the most beautiful thing ever, you see, teenagers that come with their parents who they’ve been listening to Amy with in the car.’
‘Why don’t you do a tribute?’
Holly herself came to Amy’s music through her singer dad, who was tapped into the latest jazz-influenced sounds and brought home the album Frank in 2003.
She laughed: ‘I used to sit in school, and put my headphones on, and I’d just zone out, little ADHD kid, and I just listened to Amy Winehouse for the whole day. Doesn’t matter what the subject was.’
However, the idea of a tribute act never occurred to her until in 2020 she was sitting looking through old photos with her mum.
They spotted a picture of her mum at 25, with Holly declaring she looked remarkably like the Tears Dry on Their Own singer.
‘She was like, “Oh, yeah, I do a bit, but hang on a minute. You like singing jazz, why don’t you do a tribute?” It came organically from that moment, with a little bit of persuasion and encouragement.’
She reflected on ‘snobbery’ within the music community over becoming a tribute act, something she herself had previously been guilty of.
‘Maybe people think of it as non-art, and I think I would have been in that category a few years ago,’ Holly admitted. ‘But I think the reality of tribute artists is that it’s a really beautiful, wholesome thing.
‘It’s really, really, really hard to pay bills, basically,’ she said of her decision to try out being a tribute act, although Amy had always inspired her.
‘It brings working-class people together who maybe won’t get the tickets for those big gigs that the original artists are doing.’
Concerts have been heavily criticised for their extortionate prices of late, with one ticket often costing over £80 – and those aren’t even the good seats.
‘A sign of the times’
However, it’s not just fans that are being priced out, as Holly reckons new artists are turning to tribute acts as the music industry becomes unsustainable.
‘The risk-averse label situation, they desperately need something that they know is going to work, or is a trend, or you have to have a certain amount of followers on the internet for you to even begin,’ she shared.
‘We’re not seeing the amount of new bands being grown organically in clubs like they used to. So the tribute market has grown because we’re not seeing the smaller acts breaking through as much into the mainstream.’
If smaller acts can’t get traction with their own name and they happen to bear a resemblance to a mega star, why not give themselves a boost?
And fans are more than willing to indulge, with Holly adding: ‘It’s a total sign of the times, really, with how people are really needing nostalgia. They’re looking back more than they’re looking forward a little bit at the moment.
‘We’re seeing that in all kinds of different media. People are really looking for comfort more so than something really new at the moment. That’s where tribute acts have really thrived.’
Comfort is exactly what Amy – and Holly’s – distinct voice offers, however, she’s not sure in this day and age a risk like Winehouse would have been picked up.
Amy was a lightning strike of pure talent and a winning personality, breaking through in a time where innovation felt exciting rather than risky.
She exists now as a perfect encapsulation of British music in the 00s, frozen in time due to her tragic death at age 27.
Holly reflected: ‘I think it was her authenticity as a human being that is so rare in this industry. She genuinely was herself; she just believed in what she did, and she loved what she did.
‘We’re in a social media era where what you put out is so heavily censored. Young girls who are looking at the past are inspired by her because there aren’t many people who were or are as Frank as Amy.’
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