Stateside, critics have already compared Duffy’s “honesty” to Norah Jones’ take on jazz, which is a polite way of declaring Rockferry bound for the Bose stereos of unfussy fans who discover new artists while roaming Crate & Barrel. But while Rockferry is palatable in a way that seems to guarantee mass airplay, Duffy’s vocals are hardly pop-perfect—they’re loud and crackly, and there are moments in the title track, itself a brooding, chorus-free dirge, where her voice becomes suddenly and spectacularly unhinged, slipping out of socket, snapping open. It’s the way children sing, gut-borne and entirely un-self-conscious.
Tonight, watching her rehearse from the back of the empty venue, it’s clear that Duffy is aggressive about the specifics of her sound, stopping midsong to holler instructions to the engineer or host whispered summits with her backing band. “I just want to make sure it’s done the right way,” she later explains. “My dad’s motto is ‘Always be a hard act to follow,’ and I know that sounds very showbiz, but it’s oddly appropriate to me. I’m not a control freak, but I have nothing else in my life that I care about right now.”
When she was a teenager, Duffy appeared on WawFfactor, a Welsh take on England’s Pop Idol (which begat American Idol); after finishing second, she recorded a dissonant three-song Welsh-language EP that sounds more like Evanescence than Dusty in Memphis. Now she speaks about her early career with an uncharacteristic mix of resignation and embarrassment. “I was really young,” she says. “I got used. I got roped into it. My teacher said to me, ‘Look, this TV station is here, and they want to talk to you about your singing.’ I signed my life away to this program, and when I got there, it was completely different from what they had explained. I did it. I didn’t want to, but I kept getting through. For weeks and weeks, I kept going back to Cardiff—it was a nightmare. It was the unhappiest time in my life. I thought, ‘ Who are you?’ I was a mess.”
In 2004, Duffy was introduced to Jeannette Lee (co-owner of indie mainstay Rough Trade Records and former member of John Lydon’s post–Sex Pistols band PiL) through Richard Parfitt (of ’90s Welsh rockers 60Ft. Dolls). Parfitt had previously enlisted Duffy to sing on a few demos he was recording, some of which—like the James Taylor–esque “Oh Boy”—have been used as Rockferry B-sides. Duffy was still stationed in north Wales when Lee signed on to manage her, and she began traveling the six hours into London, via bus and train, to work with Lee on the album. “The first time I heard her I thought she was a soul singer. I was so charmed by her,” Lee says. “Not only did she have an amazing voice, but she was so unlike anyone else in the music business. She had no idea about trying to be cool. I found that very charming. I don’t want to be corny and say ‘blank canvas,’ but when you grow up in a big city, you’re very aware of what’s hip and what’s not hip, what to do and what not to do—she didn’t have any of that. She was very keen to know more about music. She didn’t really know how to find that stuff in Nefyn.”
Lee eventually introduced Duffy to Bernard Butler, on the strength of his work with the soul singer David McAlmont. “Before they met, she didn’t know who Bernard was or what he did,” Lee says.
Still, Duffy and Butler began writing and recording new material almost immediately. “She was so happy and nervously enthusiastic and bright-eyed and innocent,” Butler says. “She would come around to my house, and I’d pick her up at the tube station, and she’d be telling me about every part of her journey [into London]—every part of it was exciting and fascinating. It’s a journey I do every single morning, and I don’t even look up from my newspaper. I told her to buy an iPod and I would copy music onto it; and she’d go away and come back, and I knew she had listened to everything I gave her.” Butler loaded her player with under-the-radar R&B nuggets from the likes of Millie Jackson and Ann Peebles, as well as Dave Godin’s soul anthologies.
The first track Duffy and Butler recorded together was “Rockferry,” where, over murky, anxious piano, Duffy bellows earnestly about her epic commute (“There’s no sleep for the journey / Away from town / A bag of songs and a
heavy heart / Won’t make me down”). “The lyrics that Duffy writes, they’re not Wordsworth,” Butler admits. “They’re not incredibly dark, muddled poetry. She tells you exactly what’s going on in her life, exactly what’s on her mind, and she delivers it in this completely pure, beautiful way. If Rockferry was the only record that I ever made in my entire life, I’d be a complete man.”
Duffy eventually signed to A&M in the U.K. and Mercury Records in the U.S. (both are subsidiaries of Universal), but she and Lee waited nearly four years before settling on a label. “I heard [Winehouse’s debut album] Frank, and I really didn’t think anything of it at all. I thought she had a good voice, but I didn’t really care,” Lee says. “Then when I heard ‘Rehab,’ I was a bit shocked. We’d taken a long time to get here, and maybe we should have been a bit quicker.”
“When the deal came, I took a long, hard look at myself and the situation. I knew it would give us access to the world,” Duffy says. “It gave me a ticket, but it didn’t guarantee anything. I knew it would mean leaving behind some of the things I was used to.” For Duffy, that shift required swapping out Nefyn’s pastoral pacing for the hustle of global stardom, trading vacant beaches for hotel suites, quiet streets for sold-out theaters. It meant changing the scope of her world.
MOST EVERYONE IN NEFYN HAS A DUFFY STORY. When I sit down for dinner at Y Folt, a tiny restaurant a few blocks from Caeau Capel, the guesthouse where Duffy recommended I book a room, Rockferry is oozing from the kitchen speakers. As the owner drops off my curry and chips, I gesture to the stereo. He nods vigorously and begins outlining her connections, however tenuous, to various townspeople both inside and outside of the restaurant. “She went to school with my son,” he grins. “Now he runs the
LISA PEDRICK
RE BECCA TREHEARN
EINIR DAF YDD
COUR TES Y S4C ( 3)
SEASON: 2004
SIGNATURE SONG:
“Os wyt ti Moyn e”
JOB: Training to become
a teacher
ON DUFF Y: “I didn’t
realize it was a pop
competition. I thought
the prize would be a part
in a film; that’s why I
tried out. I think Duffy
knew that she was going
to make it whatever
happened, and if she
won, it would have been
a bonus.”
SEASON: 2005
SIGNATURE SONG:
“Can Walter”
JOB: Understudy,
London production of
Dirty Dancing
ON DUFF Y: “I like
the Duffy stuff I’ve
heard—you can’t hear
her Welsh roots in it,
though. My aim in doing
WawFfactor was to raise
my profile back home,
because I’d been in
London for three years. It
didn’t affect my career in
London, because nobody
sees the show here.”
SEASON: 2006 SIGNATURE SONG: “ Y Garreg Las” JOB: College student ON DUFF Y: “I’m studying music and still releasing new albums in Wales. I watched the first season when Duffy was on. The girl who won was so different from her. She was more traditional, and Duffy had a really distinctive voice. I think maybe we weren’t ready for that then.”
ABIGAIL EVERDELL
References:
http://www.myspace.com/norahjones
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