Amy Winehouse didn’t originally sing “Valerie”.

The Zutons did.

The Liverpool band released the original version in 2006.

Then producer Mark Ronson recorded a radically different version featuring Amy Winehouse for his 2007 album Version.

Winehouse’s recording became so famous that even The Zutons started encountering people who thought they were covering her song.

But there is an even better question.

Who is Valerie?

She is real.

Who is the real Valerie?

Valerie Star.

She is an American make-up artist who dated Zutons frontman Dave McCabe.

The pair met after The Zutons played a show in Florida.

What followed was a long-distance relationship involving flights between the US and UK.

Then things became complicated.

Star encountered legal problems related to driving offences.

Those problems prevented her from moving to Britain to be with McCabe.

So he wrote about missing her.

Did Valerie nearly go to prison?

Yes.

Star later explained that she spent a substantial amount of money dealing with the legal situation and lost her driving licence for many years.

That is why the song contains questions about whether Valerie has sorted out her legal troubles.

They weren’t invented for a catchy lyric.

McCabe was literally asking about his girlfriend.

How quickly was “Valerie” written?

Very quickly.

McCabe has said the idea arrived while he was travelling in a taxi to his mother’s house.

According to Star’s later account of the story, McCabe wrote the song in around five minutes.

Five minutes.

Then Amy Winehouse recorded it.

Then millions of people spent the next two decades singing it at weddings.

Songwriting is unfair.

What does the original sound like?

Quite different.

The Zutons’ version is guitar-driven indie rock with blues influences.

Winehouse and Ronson transformed the track into something much closer to vintage soul.

If you know only Winehouse’s recording, hearing The Zutons version for the first time can be genuinely surprising.

The words are familiar.

Almost everything surrounding them is different.

Why did Amy Winehouse cover it?

Ronson’s Version album was built around reimagining songs by other artists.

Winehouse already knew and liked “Valerie”.

Their arrangement leaned into the 1960s soul aesthetic that suited her voice so naturally.

The cover reached No. 2 in Britain in 2007.

Eventually the cover became culturally larger than the original.

Did Amy Winehouse change the song?

Not fundamentally.

The transformation came mainly from:

tempo

rhythm

horns

production

and Winehouse’s vocal phrasing.

That’s a useful lesson in how covers work.

You don’t necessarily need to rewrite a song to reinvent it.

Change the musical world surrounding the composition and suddenly listeners hear it differently.

Did Valerie Star ever meet Amy Winehouse?

Star later spoke warmly about Winehouse and described her as an extraordinary artist.

She also met Mark Ronson.

According to Star, Ronson joked that he felt as though he should simply open his wallet and give her money because the song inspired by her had become so successful.

Imagine being the person behind one of the most famous names shouted on dancefloors across Britain.

Very strange.

Which version should you listen to?

Both.

Start with The Zutons.

Then play Winehouse and Ronson immediately afterwards.

It is one of the easiest demonstrations of how arrangement changes a song.

The Zutons created the composition.

Winehouse created the version that entered popular culture.

Neither makes the other irrelevant.

Other famous covers people mistake for originals

Soft Cell – Tainted Love

Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want to Have Fun

Joan Jett – I Love Rock ’n Roll

UB40 – Red Red Wine

Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You

Sinéad O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U

Radar already has a wider guide to 25 famous songs that many listeners don’t realise are covers.

Who originally sang “Valerie”?

The Zutons.

Who is Valerie?

Valerie Star.

And Amy Winehouse?

She took somebody else’s very good song and created one of those rare cover versions that became more famous than the original.