Waterfront’s Duffy breaks sound barrier;

In the music business, everybody sounds like everybody else but nobody wants to admit it. Singer Chris Duffy, of the Welsh pop duo Waterfront, is an exception.

Vocally, he’s a George Michael clone--and proud of it.

“I’d like to sound even more like him than I do,� Duffy admitted. “Why not? He’s a great singer.�

Duffy’s no fool. He’s well aware that the duo’s single “Cry�--from its debut album “Waterfront� on PolyGram--recently cracked the pop Top 10 largely because he sounds so much like Michael. Since Michael doesn’t have an album out now, his fans are hungry for anything resembling his sound.

Like Michael, Duffy, 29, could also pass for a GQ model. So could his Waterfront partner, guitarist Phil Cilia, also 29. But being good-looking, Duffy insisted, has its drawbacks.

“When you look like us they want to market you straight to the 15-year-olds,� he said. “We never felt comfortable with that market. But we were in it for a while because we couldn’t get any attention in the adult market. If you get too entrenched in that market you’re sunk. Teen idols have no longevity.�

Duffy and Cilia, who are from Cardiff, Wales, have been working together since they were 16. “The smartest thing we did was get out of Wales,� he said. “There’s no music scene there. It’s just stifling for musicians. When we went to London we eventually got a break.�

In England, they reached a dead end as a performing unit about four years ago. Their solution: take a long break and concentrate on songwriting. That turned out to be a smart move. Their material impressed SBK, an American publishing company that arranged a record deal with PolyGram.

While basically pleased with the debut album, Duffy knows its limits: “It’s quite passive as pop albums go. It’s not a powerful album. The next one will be much punchier--more up, more dance-oriented.�