UK singer Duffy a small-town girl with big dreams
By Andre Paine
LONDON (Billboard) - As a music lover who grew up in a tiny Welsh town, 23-year-old U.K. chart phenomenon Aimee Duffy is struggling to comprehend her sudden popularity.
When she played a show at the recent South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, 3,000 people showed up to watch her. Duffy, who records by just her last name, said that was more than the entire population of her hometown, Nefyn, which boasts 2,550 people.
Duffy is gearing up for her U.S. launch on the back of impressive sales at home. In the United Kingdom, her debut album "Rockferry," which marries her rich voice to a fresh take on classic soul and the '60s girl group sound, enjoyed the biggest first-week sales so far this year when it moved more than 180,000 copies after its March 3 release, according to the Official U.K. Charts Co. (OCC).
"That was mind-blowing," she says. "I'm not going to pretend it isn't strange. You really do have a new life overnight."
The A&M/Polydor release stayed at No. 1 throughout March, racking up sales to date of more than 400,000, according to the OCC. In Europe, radio airplay for her single "Mercy" meant the scheduled April 7 release was brought forward, with "Rockferry" debuting at No. 2 in the Netherlands, No. 3 in Denmark, and No. 7 in Switzerland.
In conversation, Duffy has a guileless quality that Bernard Butler, one of her producers and collaborators, attributes to her isolated Welsh upbringing. Nefyn was a bus ride away from the nearest record shop, which only stocked the top 40. That store has doubtless been doing good business with "Mercy," which spent five weeks atop the British chart.
Now the upbeat, string-laden track is spearheading her U.S. campaign, where the album will be released May 13 via the relaunched Mercury imprint.
Duffy is due to play the Coachella festival in southern California on April 27, and will return to Los Angeles the following month for a slot on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."
British-born Mercury president David Massey shuns parallels with another U.K. soul singer, the tabloid target Amy Winehouse.
"We haven't been marketing (Duffy's) personality, although she is starting to cross over and become a celebrity," he says. "She's the girl next door -- very natural and innocent and fun."
Duffy has already become British tabloid property, with London's Sun reporting last month that she was placed in a safe house a decade ago after a hitman was hired to murder her stepfather.
"Too many things have hurt me in my life and this is one thing that's not going to hurt me," Duffy says. "I just try to keep a smile on my face."
Reuters/Billboard
