In terms of legacy, few songs in the canon of Amy Winehouse have the same power as the title track to her 2007 opus Back to Black. Filled with her signature blend of despair, humour, nostalgia, wit, and coolness, ‘Back to Black’ was a depressing funeral dirge that Winehouse managed to turn into a rollicking hit single. It was a remarkable feat, especially considering how Winehouse never shied away from the song’s heartbreaking inspiration.

“‘Back to Black’ is when you’ve finished a relationship and you go back to what’s comfortable for you,” Winehouse told the British press in 2007. “My ex went back to his girlfriend, and I went back to drinking and dark times.”

“All the songs are about the state of my relationship at the time with Blake [Fielder-Civil],” Winehouse told Rolling Stone that same year. “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.”

By the time Winehouse gave that particular interview, she and Fielder-Civil had gotten back together. “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,” Winehouse claimed. “We’ve always loved each other.’ But I don’t think it’s funny. I wanted to die.”

The track would be the first that Winehouse would collaborate with producer Mark Ronson on. The pair were still getting to know each other when Winehouse laid out her ideal vision of what Back to Black was going to sound like. Almost immediately, Ronson picked up on what Winehouse wanted and began forming the basic structure of ‘Back to Black’.

“I’ll never forget the first day I met Amy – because it changed everything for me,” Ronson told Mojo about their first meeting. “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,” Ronson remembered. “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,” Ronson also said. “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.