Amy Winehouse has pulled out of two music festivals she was due to appear at this week as she “cannot perform to the best of her ability”, her spokesman said today.
The troubled singer apologised for cancelling her sets at the Kucuk Ciftlik Park festival in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Ejekt festival in Athens, Greece.
Her spokesman said: “Despite feeling sure that she wanted to fulfil these commitments, she has agreed with management that she cannot perform to the best of her ability and will return home.
“She would like to apologise to fans expecting to see her at the shows but feels that this is the right thing to do.”
He would not comment on whether she was unwell.
The announcement came after she was reportedly booed and jeered at a concert in Serbia’s capital that kicked off her European tour last night.
Doubt was also cast on whether she would give other European performances for which she is booked next month.
The singer, 27, is due to appear at Spain’s BBK Live festival in Bilbao, Switzerland’s Piazza Grande in Locarno, Italy’s Lucca festival, Switzerland’s Paleo Festival in Nyon, Nova Jazz and Blues Night in Wiesen, Austria and Poland’s Bydgoszcz Artpop Festival next month.
But her spokesman said these dates were now “under discussion”.
Serbian media described MS Winehouse’s performance at Belgrade’s Fortress before 20,000 fans yesterday as a “scandal” and a “disaster”.
Local media said that the Grammy Award-winning chart star appeared an hour late, stumbled to the stage and mumbled through her songs.
She occasionally disappeared, leaving her band playing instead, and sparked an angry response from the crowd. Tickets cost about £35, a sizeable chunk of the country’s average monthly salary of £264.
Ms Winehouse, whose music has long been overshadowed by drug use and run-ins with the law, recently spent a week in rehab at the Priory clinic. Her latest visit to the south-west London hospital was thought to have been at the suggestion of her father, Mitch, over concerns she was drinking too much prior to her live shows.
She was due to continue to be seen as an outpatient after she checked out.