Songfacts®:

• This simple piano ballad about finding a soulmate was originally recorded by the British rock band World Party for their 1997 album, Egyptology. The band's frontman Karl Wallinger told The Daily Telegraph he wrote the song in "10 minutes and recorded it in an hour."
• Despite the song winning an Ivor Novello Award in 1997, "She's The One" wasn't a hit for World Party. However, Guy Chambers, who'd played with Karl Wallinger's outfit before becoming Robbie Williams' songwriting partner, heard the track when he was helping out on Egyptology. He suggested to Williams that he should record the tune for his I've Been Expecting You album. Featuring a restrained, almost whispered vocal from the singer it was released as the fourth single from the LP, becoming Williams' second solo #1 single in the UK.
  
  "It was very strange," Wallinger recalled. "Nobody phoned to say they were doing it and they used the band I'd just been on a road with to record it."
• Karl Wallinger criticized Williams' version of his song and in annoyance the former Take That singer dropped it from his stage performances. Wallenger said that it irritated him because, "Robbie didn't sing the right words, 'cause he can't read probably. It was a weird one: you lose your friends but you make loads of money."
  
  Wallinger added at a World Party concert in London in September 2011: "The only difference between me and Robbie Williams is that I know who 'she' is."
• The song went on to win a number of awards, including a BRIT Award for Single of the Year and Best British Video in 2000. Meanwhile, Wallinger was struggling; World Party's Dumbing Up album was released in 2000 but it failed to trouble the charts and the following year he suffered a brain aneurysm which left him unable to speak. It took him five years to recover, and the royalty checks from "She's the One" were a lifesaver as he recuperated at home.
  
  "The song had a much better time than me, popping off to the BRITs while I was at home eating crackers dipped in water," he said. "But it was lucky it was a hit. It's saved my ass financially for a few years while I was holding onto the handrail thinking, what happened?"
• Williams said that he wanted to cover this song because the World Party original meant "an awful lot" to him after he left rehab for cocaine addiction in 1997. He continued: "I wanted one of those kinds of ballads on my album. I wanted to sing that song. And I wanted that song to be heard by loads of people."
  
  The problem was, Williams rarely publicly acknowledged that it was Wallinger, not him, who wrote the song. It wasn't until November 2019, during a commercial for his album The Christmas Present, that Williams made light of the spat, with the singer joking that he wrote "She's the One" for Amazon's Alexa. The device responds that he didn't write the song, to which Williams confesses: "No, I didn't."
• Directed by Nic Goffey and Dominic Hawley, the video sees Williams playing a coach to an ice-skating couple, portrayed by professional figure skaters Pamela O'Connor and Jonathon O'Dougherty. When O'Dougherty gets injured during practice, Williams takes his place for the final and receives full marks. Williams had tuition from Olympic gold medalist Robin Cousins for the clip.
• One Direction performed a duet of this song with Williams during the final of The X Factor in December 2010. The band were subsequently eliminated from the competition the following day, finishing in third place overall.
• "She's the One" was the fourth single released from Williams' album I've Been Expecting You. It was released as a double A-side along with FIFA 2000 theme song "It's Only Us." "She's the One" has since sold over 600,000 copies and been certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry.