Rehab

Winehouse wrote it and Mark Ronson produced it. It is autobiographical, about her refusal to enter a rehabilitation clinic for alcohol after her management urged her to go. Ronson told Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1 in July 2011 that the song began on a walk through New York to buy a present for her boyfriend. She told him her father had tried to make her go to rehab and she had answered "Pfft, no no no." Ronson's reaction was that they had to go back to the studio. Her father Mitch confirmed the story in his memoir Amy, My Daughter and wrote that she had put the line in a notebook years earlier. The song names Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway as Ray and Mr. Hathaway. It has been called her signature song.

The sound has spring reverb on the vocals and drums, live handclaps, timpani and bells. Tom Elmhirst mixed it from a multitrack with many tracks unused, and Ronson went to London to record strings, brass and percussion at Metropolis. Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone called it a Motown-style winner with a banging beat, and the BBC's Matt Harvey heard an obscure northern soul gem. Time put it at number one on its list of the 10 best songs of 2007.

Chart, awards and live

Based on downloads alone it entered the UK chart at 19 and went to seven when the physical single came out. In the US it reached nine on the Hot 100 after she performed it at the MTV Movie Awards on 3 June 2007, her only US top-10 hit. It won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song, and on 10 February 2008 it won the Grammys for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Phil Griffin directed the video, shot at 33 Portland Place in London, in which her band wear dressing gowns. It was nominated for Video of the Year at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards and lost to Rihanna's Umbrella.

She made her US television debut with it on the Late Show with David Letterman on 12 March 2007, and she sometimes sang Blake in place of Ray. Her Grammy performance on 10 February 2008 came by satellite from Riverside Studios in London. She sang it in 135 of the 265 logged setlists that list songs, from Jazz After Dark in London in August 2006 to the 100 Club in London on 12 June 2011.

Taking Back Sunday worked the chorus into their live sets from 2007. Justin Timberlake sang the chorus in Zurich in June 2007, and Kanye West played it as a tribute at the V Festival in Chelmsford on 18 August 2007 when she cancelled. Remixes with Jay-Z and Pharoahe Monch came out in 2008, the cast of Glee covered it, and the jazz pianist Jacky Terrasson recorded it on Gouache in 2012.