Amy Winehouse’s label boss says he destroyed an album of her demos

Amy Winehouse had recorded an album’s worth of new demos intended for her third LP, according to her onetime U.K. label boss. But the executive has assured fans they’ll never be released — because he destroyed them.

According to a new feature in Billboard, Universal Music U.K. Chairman and Chief Executive David Joseph recalled scrapping a collection of 14 starts to new songs that Winehouse had recorded to potentially follow up her 2006 smash hit “Back to Black.”

“It was a moral thing,” said Joseph, who is also an executive producer on “Amy,” to Billboard. “Taking a stem or a vocal is not something that would ever happen on my watch. It now can’t happen on anyone else’s.”

The revelation comes in a long piece examining Winehouse’s life and legacy after her 2011 death. Salaam Remi, a producer who worked on many of her formative cuts, confirmed the demos’ one-time existence in the story.

“She probably finished the writing process a few weeks before she passed,” Remi said. “As far as I could see, we had 14 songs. Whatever needed to happen, it was right there.”

The news comes in the weeks leading up to the release of “Amy,” a much-anticipated documentary from director Asif Kapadia. The demos’ destruction means that, unless another archive of material exists, Winehouse’s final album will remain her 2011 posthumous outtakes collection “Lioness.”

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