Duffy has been portrayed as many things - the new Amy Winehouse, the new Dusty Springfield, a vulnerable Welsh ingenue blinking in the bright lights of the London music scene.

Such was the blizzard of hype which heralded the arrival of the 23-year-old singer, it was easy to forget that, until this week, she hadn't even released an album.

Named after a town on the Wirral, her debut CD Rockferry came out on Monday. It is a fashionably retro affair, mixing heartbroken soul lyrics with a melodramatic, Motown-infused sound that channels everyone from The Walker Brothers to Phil Spector's girl groups.

Featuring current number one Mercy and title track Rockferry (picked by Radio 1 DJ Jo Whiley as her single of the week), the album was produced mainly by former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler.

Duffy was introduced to him by her manager Jeanette Lee, of Rough Trade Records and says the collaboration was "a casual thing".

"We met, had a laugh hanging out and one day decided to make some music. I love working with Bernard."

Duffy (she dropped her first name, Aimee) is apparently anxious for it to be heard, claiming it "says everything about me". It's an interesting assertion considering the album's emotional tales of failed relationships, cheating men and broken hearts are fictional.

"My songs aren't written directly from personal experience," she says. "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 of anything like that. I'm not writing messages to anyone about how I felt about them, I'm just writing stories."

Already, then, her record is a far cry from the blood, sweat and tears of Winehouse's intensely personal album Back To Black.

But while they share big voices and a penchant for Sixties styling, the Winehouse comparision is little more than a lazy attempt to pigeonhole Duffy - in the same manner as her peer Adele - as another "new Amy".

Winehouse lives and breathes the music she writes while Duffy's is, as yet, merely a vehicle for a beautiful voice: soul in style only.

Still, Duffy has not lived the rollercoaster life Winehouse lives. Doe-eyed and delicate, she grew up in North Wales, part of a large family who, apparently, never paid much attention to her singing aspirations.

With no CD collection of her own, her first musical memory was, she claims, her mother and stepfather dancing to Rod Stewart. Years later, she borrowed one of her father's tapes of Sixties TV show Ready, Steady, Go!

"It had The Beatles, Stones, the Walker Brothers, Sandie Shaw and Millie singing My Boy Lollipop," she says. "So sexy and exciting! I played it again and again until finally it disintegrated."

At 13 she started making tapes on a karaoke machine, posting them out to random record companies found through phoning directory enquiries. When this predictably failed to yield results, she joined local bands and even competed in Waw Ffactor, the Welsh version of X Factor.

It wasn't until she worked with Richard Parfitt, ex-frontman of the 60ft Dolls, and Owen Powell, the former guitarist for Catatonia, that she got her break. The duo brought her to the attention of Rough Trade which signed her, with co-owner Geoff Travis describing her voice as "almost unnatural".

In mid-2006, she packed in her shop job to relocate to London - a move of which much has been made. But she appears unconcerned by patronising assumptions that she is a naive girl from a sleepy backwater in Wales, admitting she might not be as worldly-wise as the "cool cats" of the capital.

"Duffy managed to grow up without any concept of what was cool or current, what she should like, how to behave or even how to sing," Bernard Butler says. "For her, just coming to London was the stuff of fairytales."

Duffy says: "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."

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