Soul of 2008?

Gracing this world in 1984 as Aimee Ann Duffy, she was raised in the Llyn Peninsula of Wales, an area renowned for its’ isolation and thus a distinct preservation of the Welsh language and culture. Music seemed to be her buzz from a very early age (though I’m loath to tout this as special – I don’t know many artists who decided to wait until their early thirties before forging a career in the fickle musical world), as she spent the majority of her later teens singing in local bands and, barring a brief brush with fame on a Welsh version of Pop Idol called Wawffactor, supported herself by working various unglamorous part-time jobs.

Her journey from there to this article is geographical as well as metaphorical – after being introduced to part-owner of Rough Trade Records Jeanette Lee in 2004 she was whisked from kitsch old Wales to the equally remote (if you’re trying to tube) Crouch End in London and handed over to Bernard Butler, ex-guitarist of Suede, now respected and respectable record producer. They proceeded to co-write forthcoming album Rockferry, drowning it in collaborating musicians, among them Butler’s chum David McAlmont.
Then came the grinding of the great P.R. machine, and tours, and hype. We’re no strangers as consumers now to emergents having to be the new “someone” and Duffy is no exception – references to Dusty Springfield are amassing like journalists at the Phil Spector trial.

All very well, if you’re to sum up 23 years of life in a couple hundred words. But the biography is auxiliary, really, because what we all actually want to know is: is she any good? In her first single (of the same name as the album), the answer is yes. She is. And, equally as importantly: how does she fare in the face of originality? Answer: okay. If we try and look at the music of this century so far in a sort of vacuum, there was certainly a kind of path that Amy Winehouse forged and if Duffy isn’t definitively walking down it, she’s in the same forest.