Readers recommend: songs about refusal | Peter Kimpton

No, no, no! Enough is enough! Personal or political, polite or angry, subtle or shouty, name your songs all about saying you can't or won't take it anymore

How to decline a verb that seeks to politely - or otherwise - decline? This week it ironically starts with a star's tragic decline. The new feature-length documentary about Amy Winehouse, directed by Asif Kapadia, manages, in compelling fashion, to reveal a phenomenal songwriting talent who begins her career as a refreshingly funny, articulate, mischievous and sassy singer. It then follows her fall, via a bad relationship and the pressures of fame and touring, into extreme vulnerability, a woman with bulimia who simply could not refuse the attentions of the wrong kinds of people and the allure and addiction of drink and drugs.

At heart Amy seemed like someone who just wanted to sing in intimate jazz clubs, someone who was screaming "No!" to herself and others around her, and found an outlet only in highly personal songwriting. Yet commercial pressure to play huge venues, and particularly appalling media scrutiny gave her no escape. Her huge hit song, Rehab, makes a famous refusal, but in life she could not refuse things that ultimately killed her.