Everyone knew the song Mercy in 2008 with Duffy ’s gravelly sky-high voice vibrating speakers in cafes, pubs and providing the go-to car anthem of the year. But after that we heard little more. Now that her
Instagram is flickering back into life , here’s the harrowing story – as told by Duffy – of where she’s been all these years. Mercy was the first single from the Welsh-born 39-year-old’s soulful Grammy Award-winning debut album, Rockferry, which became the best-selling album in the
UK that year and ended up bagging 6.5million sales worldwide. With her third single Warwick Avenue came another stupendous hit for the young singer, who is etched in our memories sitting in the back of a car with tears dancing down her cheeks, as she belts out feisty lyrics in the iconic
London music video. Hailing from Bangor in Wales , Duffy – real name Aimée Anne Duffy – went on to win three Brit Awards and her debut record proved more successful than even Adele’s 19, which in 2008 only sold 500,000 albums in the UK after its release in January that year. The year later and Duffy – devoted to her beloved Wales – turned down a role in a
Hollywood film to star in a movie called Patagonia about Welsh Argentines. After splitting from her management company Rough Trade – the team behind Rockferry – Duffy then dropped her second album, Endlessly, in 2010 which was received tepidly when compared to the rip-roaring success of Rockferry (but what sophomore albums and books do better than their career-defining predecessors…?) Then in February 2011, still seemingly full of promise, it was announced Duffy would be taking an indefinite break from music, but that she planned on releasing another album at some point. A statement from her representative at the time simply said she was taking a break before starting on her next album, but a friend was quoted saying she was ready to settle down and ‘live in the country’ with her international Welsh rugby player boyfriend Mike Phillips. They broke up in May that year. The source added, as per Wales Online : ‘She’s really down about the last album, Endlessly. It didn’t sell well and charted terribly and she isn’t trying again and making a comeback. She wants to have a quiet life and start over.’ But the third album never came. Apart from a brief reappearance in the film Legend, in which she beautifully sang the poignant 1960s crooner Make The World Go Away in a dusty bar, no one heard from her again. That’s until 2020, when Duffy bravely revealed that her absence was not due to a second album flop, or the pressures of fame – as some assumed – but because of an unimaginable experience she endured. ‘You can only imagine the amount of times I thought about writing this. The way I would write it, how I would feel thereafter,’ she began in a post. ‘Well, not entirely sure why now is the right time, and what it is that feels exciting and liberating for me to talk. I cannot explain it. Many of you wonder what happened to me, where did I disappear to and why. She continued: ‘A journalist contacted me, he found a way to reach me and I told him everything this past summer. He was kind and it felt so amazing to finally speak. ‘The truth is, and please trust me I am ok and safe now, I was raped and drugged and held captive over some days. Of course I survived. The recovery took time. There’s no light way to say it.’ Duffy revealed she’d spent her time away from the spotlight trying to deal with the traumatic experience. She added: ‘But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.’ ‘You wonder why I did not choose to use my voice to express my pain? I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes. I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken? And slowly it unbroke.’ The
Singer promised to follow up this post with further details, and she did so on her website in April of that year. She explained how opening up about the experience was akin to setting herself free , as living with her ‘dark secret’ made her ‘alone and feel alone’. Noughties pop icon returns to
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Vogue shoot She had considered changing her name , moving to another country, even becoming a florist there, dreaming of becoming ‘completely forever forgotten’ – but she decided to ‘face all [her] fears head on’ and tell the world the truth of where she’s been, rather than hiding away with it. ‘If I destroy my future, I do it to honour my past,’ she said in response to the fear of people she knows, who warned her how telling the truth could lead to scorn and disrepair.. Duffy then warned fans to skip the next 20 lines or so if they did did not want to read the ‘exact account of the kidnapping’. ‘It was my birthday, I was drugged at a restaurant, I was drugged then for four weeks and travelled to a foreign country,’ she began. The singer couldn’t remember boarding a plane, but came round while in the back of a vehicle in a foreign country. She was put in a hotel room and raped by a man. ‘I could have been disposed of by him,’ she said. ‘I contemplated running away to the neighbouring city or town, as he slept, but had no cash and I was afraid he would call the
police on me, for running away, and maybe they would track me down as a missing person.’ She continued: ‘I flew back with him, I stayed calm and as normal as someone could in a situation like that, and when I got home, I sat, dazed, like a zombie. I knew my life was in immediate danger, he made veiled confessions of wanting to kill me. With what little strength I had, my instinct was to then run, to run and find somewhere to live that he could not find. ‘The perpetrator drugged me in my own home in the four weeks, I do not know if he raped me there during that time, I only remember coming round in the car in the foreign country and the escape that would happen by me fleeing in the days following that. Victim Support offers support to survivors of rape and
Sexual Abuse. You can contact them on 0333 300 6389. ‘I do not know why I was not drugged overseas; it leads me to think I was given a class A drug and he could not travel with it.’ After it happened someone Duffy knew saw her sitting on the balcony of her house ‘staring into space’ and ‘wrapped in a blanket’. ‘I cannot remember getting home. The person said I was yellow in colour and I was like a dead person. They were obviously frightened but did not want to interfere, they had never seen anything like it.’ After, Duffy didn’t feel safe going to the police. ‘I felt if anything went wrong, I would be dead, and he would have killed me. I could not risk being mishandled or it being all over the news during my danger,’ she said. Duffy revealed she told two female officers – first when someone later tried to blackmail her with the information, and then again when three men tried to break into her home. The kidnapping was followed by ‘an extremely long time’ reclaiming the ‘shattered pieces’ of Duffy, who revealed she was at high risk of suicide in the aftermath.. She credits her psychologist for somehow getting her through when the thought of recovering was ‘almost impossible’. ‘As dark as my story is,’ Duffy said, ‘I do speak from my heart, for my life, and for the life of others, whom have suffered the same.’ Got a story? If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you. MORE : Fans concerned after 90s pop group lead singer breaks down in tears during live show MORE : Mark Ronson defends Amy Winehouse film Back to Black after disgusted fans slammed biopic