The ascent of Aimee Anne Duffy is the sort of stuff that Hollywood turns into films. Little more than a year ago, the Welsh songbird was playing sets in front of a polite audience of two. Fortunately, those two turned out to be none other than Geoff Travis, of Rough Trade Records, and Jeanette Lee, formerly a member of Public Image Limited and now a full-time artist manager. So perhaps you could say it was ‘right place, right time’.

Check out photos from Duffy’s performance at the Sydney Opera House here.

Or perhaps you could say that Duffy, with her booming voice and striking resemblance to gay icon Dusty Springfield, was always going to be ‘discovered’ – it was just a matter of when, and by whom. She was just lucky to have been picked up by sensible folks with their heads screwed on right, people who had no intention of screwing her around. She was given the time and space required to make a debut album like Rockferry with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, which went on to be the best selling album in Britain throughout 2008.

That’s got to mess with your mind. “It’s made me realise how small the world is,” she says of her whirlwind year. “I realise how clichéd and obvious that is, but it really is quite a small place to live in!”

Nevertheless, Duffy describes herself as an old-fashioned girl. Four years ago she wouldn’t have sent an e-mail, but these days she Skype-chats with her mum back in Wales while she saunters around the world. “I’m still getting used to how it all works with MP3s and downloading,” she admits of the modern musical world. “I know it sounds ironic but it’s all kind of new to me.”

Perhaps that’s why the sound of Rockferry has such a classicist approach – like fellow retro diva Amy Winehouse, there’s something delightfully old-school to Duffy’s sound, taking its sound from the 1950s and 1960s. Where Amy Winehouse is obviously influenced by the great soul divas of that time period, if anything the sound of Rockferry, with its lush strings and structured arrangements, has more in common with Burt Bacharach.

“I didn’t make my record in America, and I didn’t make my record with a slick, programming producer,” she asserts. “So of course that’s going to make it sound from a different era, because today everything is so contemporary and programming. That’s why I really battled with myself during the process of making the record. I’m 24 years old, and I like to go out and have fun, but I am a little bit maybe old-school in my approach to life. Ninety percent of my wardrobe is vintage and my favourite thing is to drink a glass of red wine and smoke a cigarette at home when listening to the radio.”

She laughs, and it’s a casual utterance – there’s simply nothing contrived about Duffy. She is, unfathomably, completely unaffected by her fame. “I don’t know what that says about me actually,” she says of her preferred night in, “but [when making Rockferry ] I really try to get a balance between the classic and still being young. I didn’t want to be a singer that appealed to my mum or my grandma; I wanted to appeal to a similar age group. That’s why I strove to get a balance between the two.”

Duffy admits that it wasn’t easy, and that she nearly drove herself crazy during the approximate four years that it took to complete her debut album. Yet it seems to have worked wonderfully well – if sheer sales, awards, and strong reviews are anything to go by. It’s the raw emotion apparent in songs such as Warwick Avenue that seems to have struck a chord with nearly everyone. It’s even more affecting in the live setting, with Duffy a highlight of festivals such as Glastonbury in 2008.

“I think the aim of the game is not to try, but just to do it,” she says of taking the songs into the live setting. “When you perform live, it’s not about winning people over; they’re there because they want to enjoy it. You have to deliver with the same integrity no matter where you are – whether you’re on a big festival, or playing to thirteen people or thirteen thousand. It doesn’t matter.

“That’s the big rule that I set myself in the beginning,” she continues. “Every day I was juggling with my emotions and how do I approach everything that I’m meant to be doing, so I thought I’d approach everything with the same intentions.”

Duffy is set to hit Australia as part of the V Festival in March, with Rockferry out now.