Songfacts®:

• This is the lead single from Welsh singer-songwriter and actress Duffy's second album Endlessly. Written and recorded in New York and London, the album was penned by Duffy and veteran songwriter Albert Hammond. Duffy explained the song's meaning to The Sun: "'Well, Well, Well' is fun and liberating about frustrations, presumptions and assumptions around the emotion of love."
• Albert Hammond is best known for writing the classic songs "When I Need You," "The Air That I Breathe," and "It Never Rains In Southern California ." His son, Albert Hammond Jr, is the guitarist of the New York rock band The Strokes.
• Hip-hop band The Roots are Duffy's rhythm section on this song. Duffy told Q Magazine how the collaboration came about: "Before anybody knew about me I went to see ?usetlove DJ-ing in London. I've been a big fan for many, many years. I gave him a CD of Rockferry but nothing ever came from it. But it hung around, my feeling of wanting to work with the coolest hip hop group in America. Their response to the song was wonderful."
• Duffy told Us Magazine about this tune: "The song had this overwhelming sense of grabbing you. You know it was kind of like I could almost step back and go, 'Whoa, this would get me going in a club; this would get me off my feet and start bouncing!' And that's all I want in this journey is to make people move, to make people dance."
• The song was inspired by Northern Soul, a Motown inspired music and dance movement that emerged from the British mod scene, initially in northern England in the late 1960s. Duffy explained to Artist Direct: "Northern Soul was a movement in the North of England that responded to Black American music 30 years ago. They used to dance in the Wigan Casino, and it's quite a profound dance. It looks like they're doing a jelly dance with jazz hands. Their feet are coordinating with their hands, and it's kind of surreal. They don't dance to the music; they dance to the lyrics. I've always been fascinated by that. They actually dance to what Freda Payne is talking about.
  
  My sister - who I very rarely play music for - said, "It's amazing with 'Well, Well, Well,' I listen to what you're saying more than I'm aware of anything else that's going on around you." There was a very big emotion that I had to get off my chest."
• "Well, Well, Well" ended up being the only single released from Endlessly, as after it stalled at #41 in the UK, Duffy's record company didn't release any more. It was a pretty spectacular flop considering the heights Duffy achieved with her debut album Rockferry, which was the #1 seller in the UK in 2008. Duffy vanished for a while, finally returning to music when she recorded songs for the 2015 film Legend, in which she starred.