The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" is notorious for its defiant chorus, which states, "They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, no, no, no." The lyrics then comment that the singer's dad thinks she's fine, so whoever's trying to make her spend a stint in residential rehabilitation has another thing coming. These lines are based on a real incident. 

As NME and Deutsche Welle tell us, Winehouse's substance abuse started to spiral out of control around the time her grandmother became deathly ill in early 2005. What's more, the bulimia she'd quietly struggled with as a teen made a comeback. All of this — along with a dash of relationship drama with on-again, off-again boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil — made things so bad that her manager, Nick Shymansky, tried his best to convince Winehouse to go to rehab and sort things out. 

She was fine with the idea, and everything was in order, but she wanted her father to back up her attempt to get sober. And Mitch Winehouse promised Shymansky to tell his daughter that the rehab plan was great, but when he actually saw her ... well, you know how the song goes. This incident has been described as Winehouse's last real chance of tackling her issues before becoming a sought-after superstar made it doubly more difficult. And while The Guardian tells us she eventually did give rehab a shot in 2008, it obviously turned out to be too late.