Duffy was born and spent her childhood years in the north Wales coastal community of Nefyn, a place too remote to be driven by style wars or opposing music factions (the nearest record counter was a bus ride away and only stocked the Top 40). The upbringing she describes is one in which everyone had to rub along together, making do and mending, accepting each other and their tastes without prejudice. Having no CD collection of her own, her first real musical memory is of walking into the kitchen unannounced to find her mother and stepfather dancing to Rod Stewart. The first steps she took towards defining her own personal identity came when she borrowed one of her dad's VHS tapes of the '60s TV show 'Ready, Steady, Go!'. "It had The Beatles, the Stones, the Walker Brothers, Sandie Shaw and Millie singing 'My Boy Lollipop.' So sexy and exciting! I played it again and again until finally it disintegrated." Says former Suede guitarist and record producer Bernard Butler of this artlessness, "Duffy managed to grow up without any concept of what was cool or current, what she should or shouldn't like, how to behave or even how to sing. For her, coming to London at all was the stuff of fairytales." "And to come here to write songs with some random bloke who'd been recommended to her, me? It meant taking two buses and then two trains and took all day. Then she'd do the same in reverse to get home, playing the music she'd just made to old ladies she encountered on the journey. It's hard for cynical music industry types to get their heads around just how far removed she was from our world, geographically and in every other way. But what you've got as a result is someone who acts and sings completely and unselfconsciously from the heart. That's a rare and magical thing." Butler was introduced to Duffy by Rough Trade's Jeannette Lee who, in August 2004 and after hearing demos recorded in this or that mate's home, became the singer's mentor and manager. For Duffy, to have not just a friend but also point of both safety and reference in the strange new world she found herself in was crucial to her own musical development and sense of self. "People keep saying to me, 'You've made a great record' but I can't take that in because I didn't do it on my own. Jeannette and I made Rockferry together and she's been with me every step of the way, broadening my horizons, introducing me to people I can trust." Butler was just one of them: having written the glorious, chorus-free, utterly hypnotic Rockferry together at the beginning of the project, they then worked on a further three of the ten tracks on what is already being talked about as 2008's most important debut release. Jimmy Hogarth & Steve Booker are the other collaborators on this classic-in-waiting.
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Duffy The Younger The Best
Panic At The Disco are wrecking chaos again! This time, with their latest album Pretty. Odd.
Hyperventilating, screaming and moshing – once these three elements are happening simultaneously, it is needless to say that Panic At The Disco is in the building. Gone are its days of the exclamation mark and weird lyrics (previously called Panic! At The Disco). Now the boys are back punctuation-free and on a much happier note, with their latest album Pretty. Odd.
This Las Vegas, Nevada quartet went from imitating Blink's Tom Delonge and Travis Barker to writing their original material and eventually gigging on the local scene, earning a following for their seamlessly blended mixture of pop punk, rock and disco.
However, writing the songs on their album Pretty. Odd. was no easy task for the band. Bassist Jon Walker said in an interview with MTV.com, "Because we were writing the album in a kind of story theme, and it was constraining us from doing anything. The first song we wrote after that was 'Nine in the Afternoon,' and instantly we were like, 'All right, we were having more fun doing this."
From that point, Panic At The Disco buckled down and by the end of the year, they were well on their way to wrapping production on Pretty. Odd., flying to London's famed Abbey Road Studios to add flourishes of horns and strings, which were incredibly fitting.
Striving for perfection in differentiation, drummer Ryan Ross chimed in. "We still try to write the smartest lyrics and the best melodies possible, just in a different way. And I hope people can hear that."
What does the title of the song "Nine In The Afternoon" mean to you? Share your thoughts here!
