Back to Black

Back to Black was released by Island Records in October 2006. The 11-track album was finished in five months and produced entirely by Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, with the credits split between them. She took her cue from the girl groups of the 1950s and 1960s and from the music she heard on the jukebox of a Camden bar in 2005, and she based the songs largely on her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, who had temporarily left her for an ex-girlfriend.

In 2005 she cut five songs with Remi at Instrumental Zoo Studios in Miami: Tears Dry on Their Own, Some Unholy War, Me & Mr Jones, Just Friends and Addicted. She sang with her guitar while Remi added most of the other instruments, and Vincent Henry played saxophone, flute and clarinet. In March 2006 she met Ronson in his New York studio, and they worked on Rehab, Back to Black, You Know I'm No Good, Love Is a Losing Game, Wake Up Alone and He Can Only Hold Her. Most of Ronson's tracks were finished at Daptone Records in Brooklyn with the Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones's longtime band. Drums, piano, guitar and bass were recorded together in one room, with a single microphone on the drums. Ronson recorded three of the band's horn players, on baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone and trumpet, as a trio to get the 1960s-sounding metallics. Ronson also worked at Chung King and Allido Studios in New York, and strings, brass and percussion for Rehab were added at Metropolis in London, where Tom Elmhirst mixed the album and Stuart Hawkes mastered it. Her father Mitch wrote in his memoir that she would burn a CD of her vocals and play it in his taxi to hear how most people would hear it.

Paul O'Duffy co-wrote Wake Up Alone, the first song recorded in her sessions with him and the only one to reach the album. He Can Only Hold Her interpolates (My Girl) She's a Fox by Robert and Richard Poindexter, and Tears Dry on Their Own interpolates Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Ashford and Simpson. Addicted appears on UK and Irish pressings of the standard album and as a bonus track on the deluxe editions.

It entered the UK chart at number three on 5 November 2006 with 43,021 copies sold, first reached number one the week ending 20 January 2007, and was the best-selling album of 2007 in Britain with 1.85 million copies. The BPI certified it 15 times platinum in March 2025. In the US it debuted at seven and, after the Grammys, reached a peak of two in March 2008. It topped the European Top 100 Albums chart for 13 non-consecutive weeks. After her death it returned to number one in the UK for a fourth time, and by July 2015 it had sold 20 million copies worldwide.

Matt Harvey of the BBC called it one of the best UK albums of the year. Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone said the tunes did not always hold up but the best ones were impossible to dislike, and Joshua Klein of Pitchfork wrote that she had a brassy voice that could make mundane sentiments powerful. Metacritic gives it an average of 81 from 26 reviews. She won the 2007 Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist, and the album was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize (won by Klaxons) and took Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2008 Grammys, where it was also nominated for Album of the Year. In 2019 the Guardian's poll of 45 music writers ranked it number one of the century so far, and in 2025 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. It is also in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.