Songfacts®:

• Sonia Marina Clarke is a British singer, musician and DJ who performs under the name Sonique. She first came to public attention in 1991 when she teamed up with Mark Moore for S'Express' second album, Intercourse, in 1991. The London-based label Serious Records signed Sonique as a solo artist and her first single, a version of the Screamin' Jay Hawkins track "I Put A Spell On You," reached the UK Top 40 in 1998. During this period, she was DJ-in-residence at Club Manumission in Ibiza.
  
  Sonique followed it up with "It Feels So Good," which peaked at #24 the same year.
• In February 2002, a visiting friend gave a Tampa, Florida club DJ an imported 12-inch version of "It Feels So Good." He started playing it, and when the song went viral, Universal Music executives Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine snapped up Sonique for their label.
  
  After it hit the Top 10 on the Hot 100, Universal re-released the tune in the UK where it topped the chart, becoming the third best-selling single of 2000 in Sonique's home country.
• After Sonique signed to Republic Records in the States, she realized she hadn't saved the original backing track, creating a problem when it came to live appearances. "As far as I was concerned that was it. I certainly didn't expect anything big to happen to the record," she recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh. "So when they asked me over to do some personal appearances, I had to go back into the studio and re-record the backing."
  
  Because Sonique re-recorded the backing track, the 2000 reissue of "It Feels So Good" is listed as a remix.
• Sonique sings of a love interest that makes her feel good. Surprisingly, the upbeat lyrical content came from a painful experience of unrequited love.
  
  "It's about this guy whom I really liked years ago, but who didn't return my feelings," she explained to The Hindu newspaper. "For he was very successful and I wasn't - at that time. And he thought that I was in love with his success. This song is just a way of declaring that it was him I liked. It was his way of walking and talking that made me feel so good, not his success."
• Sonique included "It Feels So Good" on her debut album, Hear My Cry. Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine made Hear My Cry the debut release of the new Internet-based label, Republic Records, they'd launched in late 1999. Before the album landed in record racks, they posted Sonique's music on the label's website – quite a forward-thinking move in those days.
• In the States, Sonique is considered a one-hit wonder, but in the UK she clocked up several other hits. "Sky," the follow-up to "It Feels So Good," peaked at #2, held off from the top spot by Modjo's "Lady (Hear Me Tonight)." A re-issue of her "I Put A Spell On You" cover reached #8.