Song Musings

Happy Wednesday and welcome to my midweek feature where I take a closer look at songs I’ve only mentioned in passing or haven’t covered at all to date. My pick for this post is Back to Black by Amy Winehouse. With her distinct contralto vocals and a style that blended different genres like soul, R&B and jazz, the English artist was a compelling performer and one of the UK’s biggest vocalists during the 2000s.

Back to Black, co-written by Winehouse and Mark Ronson who also produced it, is the title track of her second and final studio album that appeared in October 2006. The song was also released separately as the album’s third single in April 2007.

Back to Black reached no. 25 on the UK Singles Chart in 2007. After Winehouse’s untimely death in July 2011 at age 27 from what was ultimately ruled an accidental alcohol overdose, it re-entered the charts and peaked at no. 8. Altogether, the song has spent 34 non-consecutive weeks on the UK chart. The single also performed well in various other European countries, especially Austria where it peaked at no. 3.

The Back to Black album won British Female Solo Artist at the 2007 Brit Awards and five Grammys in 2008, including Best Pop Vocal Album of the Year. It also won Winehouse Best New Artist and Ronson Producer of the Year, Non-Classical. Moreover, it became one of the best selling albums in UK history. Back to Black also has the distinction to have entered the Billboard 200 at no. 7, making Winehouse the highest debuting British female artist in the history of the U.S. albums chart. After Winehouse had died, sales of the album surged across the world with more than 18 million copies sold to date. Here’s a live version of the song captured at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival.

Back to Black was inspired by the break-up between Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil who had left her for an ex-girlfriend. They ended up getting back together and were married in 2007. “‘Back to Black’ is when you’ve finished a relationship and you go back to what’s comfortable for you,” Winehouse told British tabloid Sun in October 2006, as documented by Songfacts. “My ex went back to his girlfriend and I went back to drinking and dark times.”

According to SecondHandSongs, Back to Black has been covered by close to 90 other artists to date, including Ronnie Spector (2011), Beyoncé featuring André 3000 (2013) and Bryan Ferry (2013). Ann Wilson also included a cover of the song on her September 2018 album Immortal. Here’s a groovy version by funk band Scary Pockets featuring Madelyn Grant. They included it on their September 2022 album Magic Hour.

Following are additional tidbits from Songfacts:

In a 2007 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, Winehouse admitted that this song and the whole album was about this difficult time in their relationship: “All the songs are about the state of my relationship at the time with Blake. I had never felt the way I feel about him about anyone in my life. It was very cathartic, because I felt terrible about the way we treated each other. I thought we’d never see each other again. He laughs about it now. He’s like, ‘What do you mean, you thought we’d never see each other again? We love each other. We’ve always loved each other.’ But I don’t think it’s funny. I wanted to die.”

The video is an artistic black-and-white number shot in Abney Park Cemetery and other locations around London, with the theme of Amy mourning for her dead relationship. That comes complete with a coffin, hearse, funeral procession, lilies, and a burial ritual. For a very small box.

This was the first song Ronson wrote with Winehouse. He recalled to Mojo June 2010: “I’ll never forget the first day I met Amy – because it changed everything for me. It was in New York, March 2006, in the studio I used to have on Mercer Street. She told me she presumed I was some old guy with a beard – like Rick Rubin. I just thought, Let’s talk about music, see what she likes. She said she liked to go out to bars and clubs and play snooker with her boyfriend and listen to the Shangri-Las. So she played me some of those records, which turned into a crash course in girl group productions.”

“She was staying at the Soho Grand around the corner and I told her that I had nothing to play her right now but if she let me work on something overnight she could come back tomorrow. So I came up with this little piano riff, which became the verse chords to ‘Black in Black.’ Behind it I just put a kick drum and a tambourine and tons of reverb.”

“She came back the next day and she was really into it, ended up staying for two weeks and we fleshed out five or six songs. It started with her and her nylon-string guitar and she would play me the song and I would write the chords down. Then she would leave for the night and I would go nuts with the arrangements.”

Ronson says that the song Amy played him that was the biggest influence on this track was “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” by the Shangri-Las.

Fueled by renewed interest sparked by the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black, the song re-entered the UK Singles chart in April 2024.

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; SecondHandSongs; YouTube