Amy Winehouse is back in London after spending 8 months living in St. Lucia. And while she looks much better than when she left – a little fuller in the face, some freckles on her nose, and fewer visible wounds on her body – she clearly wasn’t happy to be home. She burst into tears upon arrival, according to both The Sun and the Daily Mail. Perhaps that’s because she might be in London to stay, for a variety of reasons.

According to both British sources, the locals in St. Lucia have soured on Amy’s presence. And her record company has spent more than £500,000 putting her up on the island, including setting up a record studio. Yet most everyone says she’s failed to turn out any usable music.

AMY WINEHOUSE returned to Britain yesterday having turned her back on the island paradise she has called home for most of the last eight months. The boozy songbird looked freckled but fragile after jetting into Gatwick airport from St Lucia. She was fuller-faced and free from the sores that afflicted her during her darkest drug days.

But it wouldn’t be an Amy arrival without drama. Her eyes were red with tears and, when asked if she was happy to be back, Amy snapped: “I don’t give a f***.”

It seems unlikely the Grammy winner will return to the tropical hideaway she first visited in December last year, as relations with the locals have soured. A source said: “At one point Amy had toyed with the idea of permanently relocating to St Lucia but that’s no longer the case… Recently she’s been really homesick and has been complaining to pals that she’s bored… Her boozing hasn’t been well received by islanders either. While they were welcoming at the start, as time has gone on her hell-raising has put a different complexion on matters… Locals once happily drank with the singer. But more recently many have been steering clear of her because of the amount of booze she’s put away.”

I can imagine this news will go down well with publicans in north London. And I’m sure it won’t be long until Amy will return to her old Camden stomping ground. While back in the UK the singer does have a little work to keep her away from the sauce for a short while at least. She’s got a string of meetings in the next few days to put the finishing touches to her record label, Lioness. Amy is also preparing the release of the debut album by her 13-year-old goddaughter, DIONNE BROMFIELD, for later in the year.

And there’s the small matter of her own collection. Amy is looking into booking a recording studio in central London so she can continue working on tracks she recorded in St Lucia with producer SALAAM REMI. It’s now almost THREE years since her last CD. Much more delay and all the focus will be on her hell-raising rather than her music. And we wouldn’t want that, would we… ?

[From The Sun]

While I’m not surprised to hear that the St. Lucia locals aren’t as enthused about Amy’s presence as they once were, my money is on her record label pulling the plug. They were shelling out an incredible amount of money, and at some point it probably became clear to them that they weren’t going to get any return for it. And in a way they were just enabling her. Not that sending Winehouse back to London is much better. It sounds like she’s taking on too many other projects, given that her album isn’t even close to ready. Is it really the time to start her own record label and help release other people’s CDs? Amy strikes me as someone who probably works best when she has a singular focus.

Ultimately it’s going to come down to her own ability to quit the booze and buckle down for at least a short time and get her album done… or not. With Amy you don’t really talk about her going sober anymore, because that doesn’t seem likely. It’d be fabulous, but she has to get to a place where she actually wants it. However she does seem to still care about music, and she has insane amounts of talent. If she could get herself lucid and coherent just for a bit, that’d at least be a start.

Images thanks to WENN.com .