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This was originally recorded in 2006 by the Liverpool group The Zutons, peaking at #9 in the UK.

In an interview with The Zutons on popworld.com, their drummer Sean Payne revealed that the song was written about a friend of their lead singer Dave McCabe who got caught drink-driving:

"She's in trouble for drink driving. She was a friend Dave met over in the US. It's his musical postcard to her, saying he's having a hard time and can she come over and see him. He didn't mean it, it just made a good song."

Amy Winehouse is a featured vocalist on this song. After working with Winehouse on her Back To Black album, the English music producer Mark Ronson recorded Version, an album of cover songs which were mostly guitar tunes reworked as '60s & '70s Soul numbers.

"Valerie" was one of the songs Ronson covered and he told Liverpool magazine how he originally came across this song:

"I'm glad it was a Liverpool song. I think Liverpool has the best musical history of, well, of anywhere in the world. But I have to admit I didn't know the song all that well before we did it. At the time I'd just finished Amy's album, and I'd almost finished mine and I really wanted her to do a song for me. I kept asking her if she knew any new songs. I explained that it was Soul covers of guitar records. She only listens to things made before 1967, she didn't know any indie songs. Then one day she came up and said 'I like Valerie by the Zutons.' At the time I couldn't hear her voice singing it in my head. I wasn't sure how it would work, but she went into the studio and tried it. I loved it."

Pritchard was also asked if the band expected Ronson's cover to be a hit. He replied: "Because we'd had a big hit with it, she (Amy Winehouse) was so notorious at the time and he was also on the up, we kinda thought it would be a smash. The way the world works is that if she's absolutely everywhere in the media, and if she has a song that's catchy too, then everyone's happy. It's good and it's funny - nobody had covered one of our songs before."

When they recorded this cover, Ronson realized he needed to add strings to the track, but Amy Winehouse wasn't having it. Ronson knew the strings needed to appear but he wasn't going to fight with his guest singer.

The British producer admitted to Remix magazine: "Basically, I kinda had to go behind her back to put the strings on the record."