Welsh singer Duffy has released a second song after opening up about her kidnap and rape ordeal. Getty Images
Welsh singer Duffy has released a second song after opening up about her kidnap and rape ordeal. Getty Images
Welsh singer Duffy has released a second song after opening up about her kidnap and rape ordeal. Getty Images
Welsh singer Duffy has released a second song after opening up about her kidnap and rape ordeal. Getty Images

'River in the Sky': Duffy releases a new song after opening up about her four-week kidnap and rape ordeal


Katy Gillett
  • English
  • Arabic

Singer Aimee Anne Duffy, 35, more commonly known as Duffy, shared a harrowing account of being raped, drugged and held captive for four weeks overseas and in her home, in a lengthy post shared to her Instagram account in April.

The Welsh singer-songwriter, whose debut album, Rockferry, became a bestseller in the UK in 2008, said at the time she was sharing her "dark" story to help "others, whom have suffered the same".

Now she's posted a track, entitled River in the Sky, on Instagram, writing in the caption that it was "for the better days to come".

"Just like a river in the sky, why oh why do we cry?" she sings through the chorus over melodic piano music.

"I pray to fly, burden free," she sings in a verse. "She covers me so faithfully. As I learned to deal with the pain."

When I sing, I feel like I bird ... I owe it to myself to release a body of work someday

The Mercy singer debuted another song called Something Beautiful on BBC Radio 2 in March, a few weeks before she shared her story.

Aside from contributing to the Legend film soundtrack in 2015, this was her first new release since her second studio album, Endlessly, came out 10 years ago.

Duffy first revealed her ordeal in February, but opened up about the details in a post shared to Instagram on Monday, April 6. She confirmed that, on her birthday, she was drugged at a restaurant, then was continually drugged for another four weeks and taken to a foreign country.

Although she didn't detail when exactly the ordeal occurred, Duffy did say she was speaking out after almost 10 years of “hiding”, suggesting the events took place just under a decade ago.

She was at “high risk of suicide” and had spent “almost 10 years completely alone”, she added. But, after seeking professional help from a psychologist, she said she believes she can “leave this decade behind”.

“In hiding, in not talking, I was allowing the rape to become a companion. Me and it living in my being, I no longer wanted to feel that intimacy with it, a decade of that intimacy has been destructive. I had to set myself free.”

She ended her note with a positive message.

"When I sing, I feel like I bird," she said, adding that she hopes to "release a body of work someday, though I very much doubt I will ever be the person people once knew”.

We only hope there is more to come.

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