Aimée Ann Duffy (born 23 June 1984 in Bangor, Gwynedd), known professionally as Duffy, is a Welsh singer-songwriter. In 2008, she debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts with her album Rockferry, so far selling over four million copies worldwide. Duffy is the first Welsh female to achieve a number one pop single in the past twenty-five years with her second single "Mercy". She has been nominated for three Grammy Awards.
Biography
Early life
Biography
Early life
Raised in Nefyn on the LlÅ·n Peninsula in North Wales, with her twin sister, Katy Ann, and older sister Kelly, Aimée Duffy grew up speaking Welsh as her mother tongue. Her parents divorced when she was ten and she moved to Pembrokeshire with her mother and sisters. She dropped her first name at the age of nineteen, calling herself Duffy professionally and personally..
Duffy's introduction to soul music and inspiration to get into the music industry occurred while watching Whoopi Goldberg's performance in the movie Sister Act. It is known that Duffy watched her father's videotapes of the 1960s television rock show Ready Steady Go! - she says she grew up without a record collection of her own. Duffy began singing at age six and carried around a notebook which she filled with scribbled lyrics. She was later asked to leave her school choir because her voice was "too big" and she "didn't fit in."
Duffy's introduction to soul music and inspiration to get into the music industry occurred while watching Whoopi Goldberg's performance in the movie Sister Act. It is known that Duffy watched her father's videotapes of the 1960s television rock show Ready Steady Go! - she says she grew up without a record collection of her own. Duffy began singing at age six and carried around a notebook which she filled with scribbled lyrics. She was later asked to leave her school choir because her voice was "too big" and she "didn't fit in."
In 1998 (aged thirteen), Duffy was briefly put in a police safe house when authorities uncovered a plot by her stepfather's ex-wife to pay a hitman £3000 to kill her stepfather, identified as Philip Smith. Smith's ex-wife, Dawn Watson, was sentenced to a 3½ year jail term for soliciting to murder. "I was so terrified. I felt so ill", Duffy recounted in 2008, as reported by the NME magazine and The Sun. A 1998 article in the Daily Mirror, another British tabloid, quotes a man identified as Philip Smith describing similar circumstances, though the stepdaughter's name is spelled Aimy - not Aimée - and the surname Duffy is not mentioned. Duffy describes living in the safe house as a dog eat dog, claustrophobic and isolating existence. At age fifteen she ran away back to her father's house in Nefyn. Duffy said in retrospect, "It was a horrendous thing to do". Her mother and her sisters did not speak to her for about a year afterwards....read more:
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