Back to Black

Song Meaning of Back to Black by Amy Winehouse

Winehouse and Mark Ronson co-wrote the song, which Ronson also produced. The song "Back to Black" was influenced by Winehouse's relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, who had left her for another woman.

She was inspired to write "Back to Black" by her romance with Blake Fielder-Civil. Winehouse had gone to "black," which the listener can interpret as drinking and depression, when he left her for an ex-girlfriend. However, Winehouse's usage of heroin did not start until after her later marriage to Fielder-Civil (May 2007), as was proven in the Asif Kapadia documentary, hence it is incorrect to interpret "Black" as a reference to heroin.

Winehouse expresses feelings of hurt and bitterness for a boyfriend who has left her; however, throughout the lyrics she "remains strong" exemplified in the opening lines, "He left no time to regret, Kept his dick wet, With his same old safe bet, Me and my head high, And my tears dry, Get on without my guy".

“It’s a constant thing for me to better myself,” Winehouse said before making “Back to Black.”

“I’ve got a clear ambition now, to make a record of what I hear in my head … and I don’t want strings.”

Her updated stories of on-again, off-again passion and treachery found the appropriate setting in the famous, melodramatic girl-group singles of the early 1960s, and the song's purposefully antiquated arrangement gave it a cinematic seriousness (which she heightened by going with a beehive do). Winehouse's vocal is stern and tormented, flinty and keen, matching the melancholy piano and tympani.

“The thing that always drove me,” she said, “[is] relationships and how fucked up they can get.”

Lyrics of the song Back to Black by Amy Winehouse

He left no time to regret

Kept his dick wet

With his same old safe bet

Me and my head high

And my tears dry

Get on without my guy

You went back to what you knew

So far removed from all that we went through

And I tread a troubled track

My odds are stacked

I'll go back to black

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I go back to...

I go back to us

I love you much

It's not enough

You love blow and I love puff

And life is like a pipe

And I'm a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I go back to...

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I go back to...

Black, black, black, black, black, black, black

I go back to...

I go back to...

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I go back to...

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I go back to black