The rise and rise of 23- year-old Aimee Ann Duffy – or just plain Duffy now – has been well documented over the last six months. She’s gone from the North Wales coastal town of Nefyn to the top of the charts...
She's already the name on everyone's lips after debut single Mercy and album Rockferry stormed the charts.
And yes the album is named after that Rock Ferry in Wirral.
The Birkenhead area is where Duffy’s father John was born and raised and where she herself spent many happy times visiting her grandparents.
In fact her grandmother still lives there, says Duffy, who herself was born in the small north Wales town of Nefyn on the Llyn Peninsula.
The parental reference is fitting for as immensely personal an album as Rockferry is.
It brims with the epic melodrama of the likes of The Walker Brothers and Phil Spector’s fabled “Wall Of Sound”, with the enduring, timeless songs of Motown’s mid-60s heyday and, of course, Duffy’s soulful, distinctive voice.
Thematically, it’s all classic fare – love, heartbreak, loss and regret but in Duffy’s hands, the sentiments ring fresh, honest and true.
“My songs aren’t written directly from personal experience,” she reveals.
“Of course there’s an element of that in there, but that’s not how I write.
“I don’t write with the intention of being autobiographical, and I don’t feel like I’ve got any love hangovers or anything like that – I’m not writing messages to anyone about how I felt about them, I’m just writing stories.”
Duffy’s words have been put to music by various songwriters, most notably former-Suede guitarist and renowned record producer Bernard Butler, who was introduced to Duffy by her manager Jeanette Lee of Rough Trade Records in September 2004.
A month later, the fledgling songwriting team had written their first composition, the album’s title track, and have been working together ever since.
Butler, who produced albums for The Libertines, Manic Street Preachers, Bert Jansch and Roy Orbison, also lent his considerable studio talents to Rockferry.
In the countless articles written about Duffy already, she’s been generally depicted as a naive girl from a sleepy Welsh backwater a million miles from London in every sense.
And while she happily admits she might not be as worldly wise as the “cool cats” she now knows in the capital, Duffy’s not quite as wet-behind-the-ears as some of the more patronising descriptions would have us believe.
“I moved to Pembrokeshire when my parents split up, but I went back to Nefyn when I was 15 to go and live with my dad. I left all my friends, and my sisters and my mum to do that. I don’t think you make that sort of decision without not knowing what you want to do with your life,” she says.
After moving back north, she started singing in various bands, and competed on Waw Ffactor, the Welsh version of X Factor.
“Some people concern themselves with the latest trends, know who the hottest new model is and what parties are hip – but I don’t care about that stuff, even now I’m in London.
“It’s a personal thing, I could have been in Wales and taken notice of things like that, but I don’t care – I just concern myself with music.”
It seems everyone wants a piece of Duffy.
There is currently talk of her having the potential to crack the American market after she performed at the highly influential South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
She is not about to let it all go to her head though.
“It’s all very unexpected, the response I’ve been getting.
“Lots of people want to talk to me, but I’m honestly not that interesting,” she says with a wry smile.
“People should just listen to my record – it says everything about me.”
So what does the rest of the year hold for Duffy?
There’ll undoubtedly be numerous festival appearances, and tour dates sold out instantly – but it seems she is looking forward to much more ordinary things.
“I probably need something else to think about apart from this album, which I’ve been living and breathing for the last four years.
“I want to go out and have a laugh, and maybe I’ll go on a couple of dates.
“Why not? I want to have a couple of dates! Basically, I want to do all the normal things that any other single 23-year-old wants to do.”
Duffy's new single Warwick Avenue is out on May 26.
Click here to read our review of Duffy's new single, Warwick Avenue