“Hmmm…My Chemical Romance? No? The Killers? I’m losing this one!”
WRONG. It was Panic! at the Disco.
“Well, that’s a compliment, thank you very much! I’ve never heard it – I’ll check it out.”
Everyone from Louis Tomlinson to er, The Nolans have covered that song…
“The one that blew my mind was Azealia Banks singing a verse of it at Coachella, and both Bruno Mars and Queen Latifah have covered it. It’s got its own life. I don’t look back on it badly at all. Some people wrongly think we were gutted about Amy Winehouse covering it, but we thought it was the best compliment an artist could give us. You can’t fake her passion for that song.”
“When I was a kid growing up listening to Nirvana and Metallica, I didn’t think I was going to write one of those songs that your auntie sings. It’s a top karaoke song. I’m not complaining. If anything, I’d like to have written more wedding songs. They stand the test of time.”
When you first heard Amy Winehouse’s rendition, did you know it was going to blow up?
“When I first heard her version on the Radio 1 Live Lounge, I thought: ‘Fucking hell, that’s good’, but I didn’t think it would take off. We’d already had a hit with it ourselves, so I didn’t think lightning would strike twice. When she released it and it did what it did, it was crazy.”
“I met Amy three times in my life. Once at the Mercury Prize, once in the Camden boozer The Hawley Arms, and once when I was hanging around with this Brummie lad called Boo, who was a tit. He spent all night comparing me to her, saying: ‘If you’re a 1, she’s a 10’. I thought: ‘OK, I get it, she’s good’. Eventually, I said ‘Look Boo, fuck off being a wanker. You’ve done this for hours and it’s pissing me off’, and Amy turned round and said: ‘Well, you fuck off then!’ to me, because he was her mate.
“So, I walked out of the house in the strop, and she followed me and pleaded: ‘Please come back. I’m sorry I told you to fuck off. I really like that song’ [‘Valerie’]. We went back in and carried on drinking.”
“I’ve got a lot to thank Amy Winehouse for, but I’ve also got a lot to thank Boo for because if he wasn’t being a wanker, we wouldn’t have got talking about the song and I don’t think she would have covered it. So thanks Boo – he made me a 10! [Laughs]”
For a bonus half-point: Which 2010 song by a rap artist/crooner references The Zutons version of ‘Valerie’ in its lyrics?
“Fucking Plan B!”
CORRECT. Plan B’s ‘She Said’ includes the lyric: ‘And I’m saying all this in the stand/While my girl cries tears in the gallery/This has got bigger then I ever could have planned/Like that song by the Zutons, ‘Valerie’’.
“Is he trying to say we’re shit or is it a backward compliment? He was doing an album [‘The Defamation of Strickland Banks‘] in the style of Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson and the Dap-Kings, and he’s saying The Zutons’ ‘Valerie’ is a bigger song than it ever ought to be? Maybe I’m being a paranoid wanker, but it puzzled me.
“I’m not saying he’s a c*** – but he might be! [Laughs] I didn’t get it, so I messaged him on Twitter saying ‘Thanks for the mention’, and I didn’t receive a reply, so I thought he must think we’re shit! [Laughs]”.
