Out February 25th. Absolutely wonderful <3

 

 

Such a voice :wub:

I hope this Welsh singer becomes as huge as Adele will do in 2008.

 

Her current limited release (1000 vinyl only) debut single "Rockferry" has been at the top of my personal chart for the last four weeks.... and "Mercy" is clearly approaching those high standards.

 

 

This song is just as amazing as Rockberry (although I slightly prefer Mercy) but I think this one will definitely be picked up more. The upbeat verses boasted by her lovely voice is going to be the gateway to commercial success! :wub: :wub:

Edited December 20, 200717 yr by Drastic Cynosure

I hope this Welsh singer becomes as huge as Adele will do in 2008.

 

Her current limited release (1000 vinyl only) debut single "Rockferry" has been at the top of my personal chart for the last four weeks.... and "Mercy" is clearly approaching those high standards.

Adele is half as good as Duffy is. For a start she actually seems to exude some sense of warmth and actually has stage presense.

 

 

I find Adele all too obvious and tbh, dull :(

 

FAR better <3

 

I have "Rockferry" on 7", I never realised it was that limited :o

This song is so amazing! I love Rockferry so much and I can't wait to play this song to death too :lol: She's playing at the Brudenell in Leeds next Feb which is such an amazing venue and I can't wait to go and see her there.

 

Obviously, she's gonna get a lot of Amy Winehouse comparisons but personally I think she's better. Mark Ronson doesn't have anything to do with her does he?

not Mark Ronson, no - her musical partner is ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler who enjoyed some success with McAlmont and Butler (who were also amazing... the same kind of style as Duffy but with an awesome male singer David McAlmont instead).

 

I like Adele - but I LOVE Duffy.

 

I'm liking The Presets sig, too ;) - hugely underrated band.

I'm liking The Presets sig, too ;) - hugely underrated band.

 

My People is one of the essential tunes of 2008 - if there were any justice, it'd be an instant #1 - so fabulous!

not Mark Ronson, no - her musical partner is ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler who enjoyed some success with McAlmont and Butler (who were also amazing... the same kind of style as Duffy but with an awesome male singer David McAlmont instead).

 

I like Adele - but I LOVE Duffy.

 

I'm liking The Presets sig, too ;) - hugely underrated band.

 

Ah ok, just checking. I quite like Bernard Butler so it's no wonder I like Duffy :)

 

I don't mind Adele, I was very impressed with her on Jonathan Ross but now I've heard the studio version, I don't think it holds up very well.

I hope this Welsh singer becomes as huge as Adele will do in 2008.

 

Her current limited release (1000 vinyl only) debut single "Rockferry" has been at the top of my personal chart for the last four weeks.... and "Mercy" is clearly approaching those high standards.

 

its limited to only 1000 7" vinyls is it??? well if thats the case its not doing v well as I seem to be the only person who has bought it from zavvi as loads of copies are still in there. all of adele's record went in one day and suffy's still there after wks.

Duffy is available on iTunes whereas Adele isn't.

Ones To Watch In 2008: Duffy

Friday, December 28 2007, 06:00 GMT

By Nick Levine, Entertainment Reporter | Digitalspy.com

 

There isn't exactly a dearth of female singer/songwriters in Britain at the moment, even if they do have an irritating habit of getting pregnant/ cancelling all promotional engagements until the end of the year, but north Wales' Duffy is talented enough to stand out from the pack. Her debut single 'Rockferry', released last month, is an epic, sixties-style slice of pop melancholy, sung in a voice that quivers with longing and positively bristles with determination. We gave the Welsh songbird a call to find out about her journey towards musical greatness.

 

When did you first think 'I'd really love to be a singer'?

"When I was really young. It was always around, but I remember announcing it to myself when I was just a baby. I knew it was going to happen, I was dedicating myself to it."

 

Did you ever doubt that it might happen?

"No. I used to think to myself 'this is going to kill me if I don't do it'. Never."

 

When did you first sing in front of an audience?

"When my family all got together, I'd always get up and entertain everyone, but it was all a bit of a joke. My first real memory of singing for people was when I was about eleven or 12. I'd just started a new school and my new headmaster pointed at me and said: 'YOU! SING!' It was really embarrassing, but I remember thinking it was a little moment, because I'd never told anyone I wanted to sing before. I didn't rush home and tell my parents or anything - I kept the moment to myself."

 

Did your parents support your ambition to be a singer?

"Well, because I always knew, I never looked for reassurance or acceptance from anyone because I knew it was never going to go away."

 

How did you go about realising your ambition?

"I just did everything I could to get to where I am now. Every day I advanced a little further - whether it was ringing up directory enquiries and asking for the number of a record company in London, or getting into a different band, or getting a job in a recording studio. I did it all on my own at that stage - my family didn't know where I was half the time."

 

Was there a moment where you suddenly thought 'Aha! I'm definitely on the right track now'?

"Yeah - when I met Jeanette Lee and Geoff Travis from [my record label] Rough Trade about three-and-a-half years ago, just after they'd heard my demos. We've made the record together over the last three years - it was a really shared experience - and it was the first time really that I ever let anyone in."

 

When did you decide to go by Duffy, your surname?

"It was never a conscious decision - I was introducing myself as Duffy and my friends were calling me Duffy, so I just knocked off the first half of my name. For me it's no big deal, but a lot of people want to unearth why I've called myself this. It's just what I'm known as, you know. A lot of people expect me to be a boy. Taxi drivers turn up and say 'you're a girl called Duffy?!'"

 

You've worked with Suede's Bernard Butler on your album. Were you starstruck when you first met him?

"I didn't know who he was when I first met him! I thought he was just some guy at Rough Trade, hanging around and saying hello. Then we got together that afternoon and I had no expectations of what might happen. But, as I've found out after working with him over the last few years, he's truly amazing. I'm a genuine fan. It's just a really natural working relationship. I don't walk into the room thinking 'Oh my god I'm in the studio with one of the greatest guitarists ever'."

 

How's the album turned out?

"There's ten songs on the record, and I think they're all very different, but there's something that relates them to each other. I was conscious about making a record that sounds fluid, even though I worked with a few different people. It's not a concept record, but it sounds like a record, you know."

 

'Rockferry', the single, has a big, sixties-style string arrangement. Are any of the other songs in a similar vein?

"'Rockferry' has a cousin, shall we say, on the record called 'Just A Dreamer'. It's got a really nice, luscious string arrangement. Some of the songs have big arrangements; some have smaller arrangements; some have modern arrangements. The album's really made up of all different shapes and sizes."

 

What's 'Rockferry' about exactly?

"It isn't actually about the place geographically; it represents something other than that. 'Rockferry' is a song about trouble. If you're trying to achieve something in your life, if you're trying to get somewhere, 'Rockferry' is that place."

 

Where would you like to be five years from now?

"I'd like to be very wise. I hope I know a lot more than I do now! I'm learning all the time at the moment - every day there's a new challenge for me. I'm only just learning what language to use when I want my microphone turned down, you know, because it's all so new to me. It can be quite difficult on a daily basis to communicate with the people I work with, so I'm just looking forward to knowing more."

 

'Rockferry' is out now. Duffy's debut album follows early next year.

 

Digital Spy Link

Edited December 28, 200717 yr by Jonny

Duffy is defintelly talended!

 

She will (can) be big in 2008 with a great promotion

 

 

Duffy's past revealed

teletext.co.uk

 

Duffy has revealed she sang on two albums before she signed to Polydor.

 

Before she was "discovered" by Rough Trade boss Jeannette Lee, Duffy sang three songs on Mint Royale's album See You In The Morning and two on Welsh collection Rock Roll & Soul in 2004.

 

She was initially discovered by Catatonia guitarist Owen Powell after being runner-up in a 2003 talent show, and was considered to become the replacement for Cerys Matthews in the band before they decided to abandon plans to carry on.

 

Duffy is defintelly talended!

 

She will (can) be big in 2008 with a great promotion

 

wasnt she was on Jools NYE show last night, not watched it yet so cannot comment, probs be better than adele's perfs on tv

Yeah she was. She did a cover of PP Arnold. I didn't see it myself but apparently she was really good.

Yeah she was. She did a cover of PP Arnold.

 

well i guess that a very Jools cover to do. i guess that PP Arnold will probs turn up on the show soon as well and do some old soul belting stuff.

 

PP Arnold supposed to have recently released a good album with Dr Robert from i-guess-the-style-council-alikes the blow monkeys - probs a much better idea to invest in that than an Ocean Colour Scene best of, though Paul Weller would be happy with either :lol:

Rockferry was named after an the location Rock Ferry near Birkenhead on Merseyside

Duffy's past revealed

teletext.co.uk

Before she was "discovered" by Rough Trade boss Jeannette Lee, Duffy sang three songs on Mint Royale's album See You In The Morning.

 

 

I didn't think this was a secret - I have the album in question - superb it is.

This is easily becoming a firm favourite of mine its a grower, I find Mercy better than Rockferry, the bongo drums gives it a better sound and I find it very motown-ish

From The Times January 12, 2008

 

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00264/Duffy_264267a.jpg

Duffy the voice: a new star is born

 

She has emerged from deepest Wales to be hailed as the sound of 2008. And with prodigious natural talent and dollops of retro cool, it’s easy to see why

 

The first and potentially best new musical name of 2008 has been posing as directed on an icy hometown beach for 20 minutes now. Though gloveless and merely cardigan-ed in protection against the winds, her charm and positivity remain intact. “Thank you,” she persists in saying to the swaddled but still shivering rest of us: photographer, assistant, make-up artist, journalist and PR. Variously, and not just here but at a number of equally frigid other locations, that has meant thanks for holding her coat, for taking such care, for being sufficiently interested to have travelled all the way to the Gwynedd coast to meet her relatively unknown self. If good manners and an appealing nature were all it took to guarantee success, 23-year-old Amy Duffy would have it made.

 

They’re not all it takes, of course. In fact, they’re often a hindrance. But no matter, because Duffy (she forgoes her Christian name, perhaps because to use it would invite comparisons with another hugely talented but now sadly infamous singing Amy) has all the other, more conventionally requisite stuff at her disposal, too. First and foremost is the white-soulful, emotionally honest voice, a gloriously far cry from the posturing of an X Factor generation of female hopefuls. Then there’s the retro-influenced but still idiosyncratic look, a natural exercise in self-expression and not the work of some bought-in stylist. That she’s also responsible for a debut as accomplished as Rockferry, the best pure pop album since that other Amy’s Back to Black, is the icing on an important cake.

 

To those involved in Duffy’s journey towards the spotlight, it is a source of wonder that someone so inherently gifted should come from the background she does. For in terms of pop awareness, she grew up virtually illiterate, firstly in the tiny coastal community of Nefyn (population 2,550 at the last census), then later in Letterstone, Pembrokeshire. Welsh is her mother tongue, English her second language. There was no record collection, and for years no ready access to a proper music store (the nearest outlet, a bus ride away, stocked only the Top 40). Her first intimation of teen spirit? Tellingly, it came via an old VHS tape of her father’s, one containing an episode of the Sixties chart show Ready, Steady, Go!.

 

“The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Walker Brothers, Sandie Shaw and Millie singing My Boy Lollipop,” she smiles in recollection. “I thought it was the sexiest, most exciting thing ever, and I played it again and again until finally it disintegrated.” Is such relative innocence plausible in the modern cultural age? When you drive, drive, drive towards Nefyn on a winter’s day and thus have time to ponder its further isolation in the pre-mobile phone and internet era, then yes, very much so. “Look, there’s Titty Mountain,” tour guide Duffy had said, pointing out an aptly named geographic feature passed on our final approach. “Coming back from visiting our nan in Liverpool, me, my two sisters, Mum and Dad in our little red Metro, we’d know we were almost home when we saw Titty Mountain.”

 

The Nefyn of her parents’ heyday was a different place to today’s wind-whipped, battened-down town. “It was buzzing back then and all the youngsters from the surrounding farming communities dreamt of working here. Parked outside the Nanhoron Arms Hotel, they say, would be Bentleys and Ferraris belonging to this smart set of summer visitors.” Sharp-suited, quick-witted, handsome, John Duffy had been sent from Merseyside to the establishment as an interim manager, someone who could shake the place up a little, teach it new ways. Local girl Joyce Williams worked there as a waitress. “People tell me she was a bit of heartbreaker. Great figure, really good dresser, always wore pearls. A dolly bird.”

 

The attraction was instantaneous. When the inevitable happened and Duffy’s father asked her mother out, her only question was, “D’you have a car?” He did and so the die was cast. To the amazement of all who knew him, John Duffy jacked in his place-hopping job and junior playboy lifestyle (“the convertible car, even a little speedboat”) for the year-round joys of Nefyn, where for the past 30 years he has managed its constitutional club, effectively the town’s social centre.

 

As hosts, John and Joyce were a focal point in Nefyn’s communal life, “This sweet, attractive couple, living above the shop as it were.” They had first one daughter, Kelly, then four years later, twins Amy and Katy. “My mum only found out the week before we were born, and it was such a big deal locally because we were the first to be born here since the 1890s. There’s a photo somewhere taken of us on the day of the fair, newborn babies being held by the previous ones, by then aged 90.” And life for the young Duffy girls was idyllic, season after season. “Nefyn was an amazing place to be a child. I couldn’t have asked for anywhere better. It was safe, friendly. You could stay out all hours, playing on the beach. The only downside is that I didn’t grow up very worldly. You couldn’t.”

 

But the harsh realities of life can impact anywhere. Duffy’s parents’ marriage ran into difficulties and, towards the end of her time at primary school, they announced their intention to separate (later they would divorce). “It was a tough time for all of us, but I see now that my sisters and I have been lucky. I know other people who had the experience when they were kids of their mums and dads splitting up messily and they’re still living with the aftermath. We’re not at all. We’re fine. Of course, it was a big thing in the town at the time, everybody talking about it, but I think my mum did the right thing in leaving. I remember my dad being very upset, even though he thought we were just moving down the road a way.”

 

They weren’t. Joyce Duffy had reconnected with her childhood sweetheart, Phil, in the interim. “He’d been a bit of a wild child and my grandmother hadn’t approved. Then he moved away, and contact had been lost.” And then, eventually, was remade. “Both of them with failed marriages by this point. They fell madly in love, the holding hands and kissing in public kind of love. And so we moved hundreds of miles away [to aforementioned Pembrokeshire] and found ourselves living with four new stepbrothers and sisters and an uncle. Ten people in all. No privacy and not much money, either. So not a good time to ask for music classes, which I’d have loved.”

 

For although she hadn’t yet got any CDs of her own, the young Duffy already knew she had a voice, albeit a fledgling one. And on her first day at a strange school, the music teacher discovered it, too, after pointing at her and asking her to sing solo. “Me? The new kid in the class? Just horrible. My face was burning. But on hearing me he said, ‘There’s something in that. Carry on,’ which was like an endorsement, the first I’d had.” In all other respects, this new environment represented a total culture shock. Back in Nefyn, Welsh was spoken at school and continues to be among her sisters (she still has friends who speak nothing else). Here, no one spoke it.

 

While both her siblings would go on to wear cap and gown, the growing Duffy struggled with academia. “Not that I was stupid. I got GCSEs. I got A levels. And to try to keep everyone happy, I then went on to college [in Chester, where she completed two out of three years of a nebulously titled course, Culture], but simply didn’t get it or want it. My graduation photo was never going to be in a frame alongside the other two’s.” Yet she describes those years as being among her happiest. “In addition to classes I was waitressing in a really fun French restaurant, plus singing each Tuesday night in a bar, Alexander’s. People were becoming interested in me. Life felt like it was jam-packed.”

 

In time, one of many demos she had recorded reached the desk of Jeanette Lee, who 20 years ago and in partnership with Geoff Travis founded Rough Trade, the record label and management company (among the acts she has represented are Pulp and Beth Orton). “Instantly I was completely taken with this amazing voice,” she recalls. “I didn’t even know if Duffy and I would work together. But I felt strongly that I needed to meet her and help her take things forward. When she came to London to see Geoff and me, we were just bowled over. She was charming, disarming, a breath of fresh air.”

 

Duffy, by then back in Nefyn and travelling by bus each day to Pwllheli to work in a ladies’ seconds clothing store (“Lovely owners, stock around ten seasons old and waiting bravely to come back into fashion, mainly elderly clientele, nothing over a tenner”), remembers being similarly smitten. “I didn’t know what Rough Trade was or what it stood for, but of course I recognise warmth and knowledge. A lot of people I’d met along the way had wanted me to do things I didn’t want to, in terms of sound or songs or style. Jeanette and Geoff were just so relaxed.” And for Lee, the fact that Duffy was self-admittedly ignorant of music history but desperate to learn was “the absolute perfect situation. We set about introducing her to great music and she simply lapped it all up.”

 

They also introduced her to ex-Suede guitarist, now record producer Bernard Butler, who was similarly taken with her artlessness. “She managed to grow up without any concept of what’s cool or current, even of how to sing,” he enthuses. “For her, coming to London at all, was the stuff of fairytales. It meant taking two buses, then two trains, took all day and was a leap of faith. Then she’d do it all in reverse to get home, playing the music she’d just made to old ladies she’d meet upon the way. It’s hard for cynical music industry types to comprehend how far removed she was from our world. But what you’ve got as a result is someone who acts and sings utterly unselfconsciously and from the heart, a most rare and magical thing.”

 

Together they wrote the title track of Rockferry three years ago, and so began the slow process of readying Duffy for the spotlight. Along the way, Lee became her manager, a small band of writers and producers was brought on board (Jimmy Hogarth, Eg White and Steve Booker) and a deal signed with A&M. The resultant album is gorgeous, mixing sounds redolent of Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield’s Bacharach & David-penned Sixties heartbreak with something very Welsh, untamed and all of Duffy’s own. Radio 1’s Jo Whiley was sufficiently moved to make Rockferry her single of the week; similarly, her one appearance on Later was not enough for Jools Holland, and she went back a second time. She’ll be a star.

 

But currently she’s one in waiting, and with blue lips, Porthdinllaen beach in winter being what it is. “Is that Amy?” wonders pensioner “Ming” Owen, on her way back from the Londis mini-mart. “It is! You having your picture taken as well and me in this old coat.” Then, turning to the rest of us, she adds, “Lovely girl. Sweet girl. Always was. I hope it’s true what they say in the paper.” (“Young singer hits the big time,” reads the billboard outside the newsagent’s this week.) At which point publican Stuart Webley, spotting Duffy amid our sorry crew, takes pity and opens up Ty Coch Inn. Her old schoolfriend Elgan Jones happens by, too, in recovery having broken his back playing rugby.

 

They want to know all about making an album and what it was like to tour recently in support of the Magic Numbers. “Amazing,” says Duffy of the latter experience. “The first time ever my family sees me perform and it’s at the Festival Hall. Mum was there, my stepdad, an auntie and uncle and two cousins. Another auntie cancelled ’cos she was worried about the terrorists in London.” Meanwhile, and en route to popping in on her dad, what she needs to know in return is all that’s been happening in her old neck of the woods: “Who’s going out with who? Who’s broken up? All of that.” A three-cornered volley of Welsh ensues. To the rest of us, only an increasingly wide-eyed Duffy’s eventual, “Scandal! Scan-dal!” is comprehensible. Which proves that you can take the girl out of Nefyn...

 

The single Mercy is released on February 25 and the album Rockferry on March 3, on A&M. Duffy is on tour from January 16