THE LAST TIME I had a ticket for Amy Winehouse was in Los Angeles in March. She'd played the Roxy the previous night but I didn't have a ticket for the Roxy. With a certain inevitability she was a no-show at Spaceland in Silver Lake. That was the gig I had the ticket for.

From Silver Lake to London's Somerset House via a wedding and a Mercury Prize nomination: would the divine Ms. W stand me up a second time? Well, she didn't, and she told us – more than once – how she'd been looking forward to this for "months."

I'd been instantly smitten by Winehouse's sophomore opus Back To Black: not by the novelty hit 'Rehab' so much as the album's other treasures, which did something I didn't think possible: take the basic '60s soul blueprint, tweak it just enough for a tattoo'd post-hiphop generation, and turn the whole trope into something vitally personal and contemporary.

Me? I was never convinced by Joss Stone and never will be. But this little slip of a Jewish street princess comes over 100% credible, customizing her soul and ska influences to fit her f**ked-up persona. Someone said Winehouse's lyrics read like pages from a drunken teenager's diary, but they're more than that: they're piercingly believable, achingly sharp, rid of all cliché.

Great artists combine artfulness with something that's rawly their own: the key is that we can't separate the two from each other, to the point that it ultimately doesn't matter anyway. With Winehouse we're drawn in by an uncanny mix of hip toughness and about-to-implode vulnerability (which might just be part of her "act" – how can we know and why, frankly, should we care?)

Here she is, this skinny slumming Ronnie Spector clone with her mascara mask and piled-high beehive, the sole female onstage with a besuited band that resemble rude-boy bodyguards: the two black dancer-singers, the three white horn men, the guitarists and drummer who resemble some late '60s Kingston session band.

Here she is, underplaying every vocal flourish and girlish provocation, and we can't tear our eyes from her dark elfin figure. We want to know more, to know how dangerous this really is. The remarkable thing is, she's not a brat at all, letting her music do the talking at all times. She sings brilliantly, saving herself and placing every line just so, periodically letting herself go in a melismatic cry from the heart. The voice is essentially Lauryn Hill's, as the passage from 'Doo Wop (That Thing)' tacitly acknowledges, but you don't actually think Fugees or Miseducation when you hear it.

As I say, the whole thing – iconography and choreography – is a hair's breadth away from Stax-Motown pastiche, but it never feels like that. In fact the essential feel of Back to Black isn't Stax/Motown at all but the early '60s girl-group soul that came out of Chicago and New York's Brill Building, infused with the street-sharp mood of ska and bluebeat (and even 2-Tone, as the cover of the Specials' 'Hey Little Rich Girl' makes clear). 'Me and Mr Jones', perhaps her most startling song, almost feels pre-soul. 'Wake Up Alone' and the heartbreaking 'Losing Game' are more Luther Dixon or Berns/Ragovoy than Berry Gordy or Booker T. and the MGs. The genius of B to B is that it recreates the ornate feel of that music while emphatically yanking it out of the museum.

"What kind of f**kery is this?" I'm not sure I know, other than that Winehouse gets me deep in my gut. I dare say she'll crash and burn like every other codep dipso celeb in London – I'm not encouraged by her constant and rather exhibitionistic scampering over to hubbie Blake – but even if she does she'll have left behind at least one remarkable record. As she winds up with the Zutons' 'Valerie' everyone is smiling and jumping with untrammeled joy: live music doesn't get any better than this.

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