Producer and DJ Mark Ronson puts own spin on his hit songs

Renowned for years as a behind-the-scenes hitmaker, Mark Ronson clearly remembers the conversation about his potential solo career.

It was early 2008, not long after that year's Grammy Awards, where the producer shared several prizes, including record of the year, for his work on Amy Winehouse's smash Back to Black album. Ronson had also just released his own record, a set of smartly appointed covers that featured a track with Winehouse, the troubled soul singer who died in 2011.

Their song, an earthy rendition of Valerie by British band The Zutons, had exploded in Europe, and Ronson was in talks with his American label to put it out as a single in the US. "But the radio [promotions] guy was like, 'America will never get with the concept of a record under the producer's name'," Ronson recalls. "He said, 'That's a European thing. You have to accept that it just won't work'."

Seven years later, the concept is working quite well. Last week, Uptown Funk, Ronson's current single, unseated Taylor Swift's Blank Space on top of Billboard's Hot 100, the latest achievement for a track that has sold 1.7 million copies in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and has been streamed more than 130 million times on YouTube and Spotify.

An irresistible party jam with vocals by Bruno Mars, Uptown Funk - the lead cut from Ronson's genre-mashing new album, Uptown Special - follows recent hits such as Pharrell Williams' Happy and Calvin Harris' Summer in demonstrating that American audiences have come around to the idea of pop songs released by knob-twirling studio types. For Ronson, the song is also proof that he's rediscovered his mojo after enduring a rough patch.