Songfacts®:

• Like the other songs on the Back to Black album, this was written during a difficult time in Winehouse's life. Her then boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil had abandoned her to return to his previous girlfriend, leaving Amy devastated. In an interview with the Sun newspaper October 27, 2006 Amy explained: "'Tears Dry On Their Own' is a track about the breakup with Blake, my ex. Most of these songs are about him. I shouldn't have been in a relationship with him because he was already involved with someone else a bit too close to home. The song is about when we split up and saying to myself: 'Yes, you're sad but you'll get over it.' And I did."
  
  Blake subsequently returned to Amy and they got married in May 2007.
• This is based around the background music arrangement for the Ashford and Simpson Motown song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," which was an American #1 for Diana Ross in 1970.
• Amy told the crowd at Shepherd's Bush in 2007: "This song's about when you're in a relationship and you know it's going to end, and you know you're going to be upset, but you know that you have to do it." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Peter - Belfast, United Kingdom
• This was one of five songs Winehouse recorded with Salaam Remi at the producer's Instrumental Zoo Studios in Miami. The songs Winehouse sketched out with Salaam Remi were decidedly downtempo compared to the Mark Ronson-produced cuts. The Miami producer wanted to bridge the gap, and when he discovered online leaks of some of the isolated backing tracks of Marvin Gaye and Tammi's Terrell's original version of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," he felt that would help "Tears Dry on Their Own."
  
  "I was sitting there, listening to it and I was telling Amy, 'Tears Dry' could [work over] that," Remi told Mojo magazine. "She just could not hear it. I almost had to sing it pretty much to get her to figure it out, and she still was frustrated. Being one-take Amy that's the most [outtake] swearing that I recorded of her, ever. But, it was just really the whole are idea of her singing very sad lyrics against an encouraging backing track. That juxtaposition, and also making it one of the faster records on the album, kind of gave it another spark."
• Filmed in Los Angeles, the music video follows the singer's journey down Hollywood Blvd, among hookers and a doomsday predictor, to reach a motel room littered with empty beer bottles. Her situation is mysterious: Is she a restless girlfriend waiting for her inconsiderate partner to show up? Is she holed up grieving over a breakup? Is she a world-weary prostitute? The singer never divulged the answer, but the clip was very important to her because it fulfilled a long-held dream.
  
  When Winehouse was a teenager, one of her goals was to be photographed by David LaChapelle, a fine artist who was also known for his surreal celebrity portraits. In 1997, when Winehouse was 14, LaChapelle directed his first music video: "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" by The Dandy Warhols. Ten years later - after directed numerous videos for Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, and Blink-182, among others - he finally worked with Winehouse on "Tears Dry On Their Own."
• Thanks to the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black, "Tears Dry On Their Own" saw a resurgence in popularity, re-entering the UK Singles chart in April 2024. This time it peaked at #49.