Reclusive pop singer Duffy has been spotted sneaking into her comeback gig, 13 years after her last public performance.
The Welsh singer, 42, burst onto the scene in 2008 with the album Rockferry, which sold 9 million copies worldwide. But she disappeared from public view following the release of her second album Endlessly in 2010, re-emerging a decade later with a harrowing story to tell.
The Mercy hitmaker, whose real name is Aimée Duffy, offered a shocking explanation for her 10-year absence from the music industry, revealing publicly in February 2020 that she was drugged, raped and held captive “over some days”.
On Instagram, she wrote: “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.”
She offered more details in later online posts, claiming she had been drugged at a restaurant on her birthday before being taken to another country, where she suffered a terrifying four-week ordeal.
“I can’t remember getting on the plane and came round in the back of a travelling vehicle.”
“I was put into a hotel room and the perpetrator returned and raped me.”
“Rape is like living murder. You are alive but dead,” she wrote.
“All I can say is it took an extremely long time, sometimes feeling never-ending, to reclaim the shattered pieces of me.”
Since making those public statements six years ago, Duffy has remained out of the spotlight, but is now taking some tentative steps back to the music career that’s laid dormant since 2010.
Last month came the first public sighting of her in 15 years, after a fan posted a photo of a meeting with her in a Wales cafe.
And now come these new photos, showing Duffy entering a venue in London where she performed an exclusive comeback gig this week.
She was flanked by secrurity, including a bodyguard who has worked for Noel Gallagher for decades.
The Sun reports that guests at the comeback performance were required to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to attend.
The one-hour performance took place at the intimate Hoxton Hall in East London, in front of a specially invited audience including a bevy of colourful drag queens.
Duffy and friends were then seen celebrating at an afterparty at a nearby pub, where revellers could be heard singing Duffy’s signature hit Mercy before the singer herself was seen leaving the venue at around 2:30am.
Duffy is also preparing to share the story of her kidnapping on camera for the first time, with the impending release of a new Disney+ documentary about her rise to fame and subsequent ordeal.
“The documentary will be a retrospective film traversing Duffy’s life, from her upbringing in Wales, through to her meteoric rise to fame and her withdrawal from public life following her unfathomable experience,” Disney stated in a March release.
The doco “will be driven by new, unprecedented access to Duffy, along with a rich and nostalgic archive, and interviews with family, friends, and close peers in the music industry.”
The documentary does not yet have a release date.
