Jamie Duffy: “Instrumental music is ambiguous. It means different things to every person who listens to it"

His debut single was the biggest from an Irish artist since Hozier’s ‘Take Me To Church’. He opened for Zimmer and Bocelli.

Now, he’s got a top ten album. And Jamie Duffy has Hot Press to thank for it all. Well, sort of…

“I had a song called ‘Genie’. I think back and cringe,” says the 24-year-old with a smile. “But I won a Local Hero award! I came second in the region and I thought, ‘This is absolutely brilliant.’

“I didn’t win the full thing and I’m thankful. I might have become a pop artist instead. Hot Press’s rejection of me allowed me to have success in the neoclassical world.”

That so-called rejection is just one rung on the long ladder to his self-titled debut LP, which Duffy says validates three years of graft. It also confirms the Monaghan native as a rare creative force, capable of blending Irish instincts into neoclassical soundscapes.

“A lot of that happens subconsciously, I have a story within me and a direction I want to go,” he says, explaining his writing process. “I will sit with that for hours until I figure out the melody and structure.

“As a composer, you have to use tools. In this album I’ve used synths and intense-sounding strings to tell the lively, frantic stories. We’ve also got gentle piano and ethereal vocal production in the background, to tell those more quiet or intimate stories.

“It’s a reflection of my life over the last three years. Crazy and confused, but at the same time, there’s been so much peace and enjoyment.

Composing wasn’t always the plan, with Duffy having studied politics at Queen’s University .

“I thought I would go into the Department of Foreign Affairs and make my way up to an ambassador or something,” he says.

“I also thought about becoming a broadcast journalist.”

Those interests are still woven through his work. A native of Glaslough, a small border village, his songwriting echoes Ireland’s complicated past. His track ‘Into The West’, for example, was inspired by the Famine.

History and Politics: The Match To Music’s Fire was the title of a very assured Ted Talk Duffy gave at Stormont Castle last year.

“Where I’m from, you have to be political,” he says. “It seeps out of every pore. My grandparents were in showbands and travelled around the North during the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, when it was a very challenging time to do that. You only have to look at the Miami Showband, who were massacred.

“When I moved to Belfast to study, I was working as a pianist in the Europa in Belfast, which was the most bombed hotel in the world. The guests would remind you of that every night and I’d have to pretend I didn’t know.

“When I moved to Dublin, I got to see it from an outside perspective. There’s a bit of a lack of understanding the further south you go. Especially with young people. I meet people and they can’t even tell me if Monaghan is in the Republic.“

Is music a way to bridge these gaps?

“If my music can do that, that’s a gorgeous thing,” Duffy says. “I played in Ulster Hall a couple of weeks ago. Somebody said to me before: ‘Who goes to your shows – is it Catholics or Protestants?’ I said this on stage and the roars of laughter made it apparent that it was a 50/50 crowd.

“It was really lovely. People from both sides of the community were there just to listen to music.”

His rural Irish background shapes his sound in other ways. Nature and folklore are frequent sources of inspiration, and there’s a fondness for the tin whistle, which stems from a childhood spent playing in the church, where his grandfather was the choir master.

“I would not see myself as religious, but church is a gorgeous place to play music,” Duffy says. “My childhood is the well that all this music comes from, playing with those people and playing with the older generation – that’s how I learnt.

“The music that they would listen to and perform would be Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan – all these folk legends. That informs a lot of my music.”

It’s probably time to talk about ‘Solas’, the cascading, piano-driven hit (currently sitting at 100m+ streams) that changed everything, even if it was never supposed to.

“I always played that type of music at home for myself. I never thought it would connect,” Duffy shares. “But instrumental music is ambiguous. It means different things to every person who listens to it. I think people love having that creative moment of listening and letting their mind wander and letting the music tell a story in their head. That really strikes a chord, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

While he acknowledges the role it played in his career thus far, Duffy has mixed feelings about social media.

“I strongly dislike having to use it, but I love it when the reward pays off,” he says.”I look at social media as a window where I put my music. If people don’t like it, they can close the blinds. If they like it, I can leave the window open and they can become a fan.”

And can he describe the ‘Holy Shit’ feeling when the ‘Solas’ numbers kept scaling?

“More like ‘Holy fuck!’” is the answer. “Even when it was going to four or five million, I was like, ‘Is this normal?’ That might sound completely ignorant, but you have to remember – I did not anticipate any of this. I didn’t want to be a musician; I didn’t think it would ever happen, so I was clueless.”

Jamie Duffy by Juliette Rowland.

It became real when Duffy opened for Andrea Bocelli and Hans Zimmer at Hyde Park in 2024.

“I’d love to tell you that we all had great craic backstage, but no, they very much kept to themselves,” Duffy shares. “My trailer was beside Hans Zimmer’s though. I had a realisation that I have taken this from social media and made it into something that I get to do in the real world.”

Channelling his trailer neighbour, Duffy has moved into film composition, recently finishing the score for 500 Miles, starring Bill Nighy and Maisie Williams.

“It was due to be submitted the same week my album was submitted. I thought I was going to put the ‘dead’ in ‘deadlines’ and die from it all, but we got there.

“I hadn’t scored anything until that point. I have a mentor, Atli Örvarsson. There was a goodness in his heart that mentored me through the whole process. Without him, I couldn’t have done it.”

For all his big-screen ambitions, Duffy’s own listening is rooted in pop. He cites the dramatic cinematics of Lana Del Rey’s  Born to Die: The Paradise Edition as being “life changing.”“I listen to a very select amount of neoclassical music when I want to learn from them,” he reveals. “It’s pop music I’m really obsessed with. A lot of my music is informed by pop. I think an ear for a good melody is what all good music centres around.”

He’s an accomplished singer himself, as anyone who’s heard his cover of ‘Cod Liver Oil And The Orange Juice’ – recently revived by The Mary Wallopers – will attest. Singing and tin whistle are set to be the focus on upcoming projects, where Duffy plans on “getting real Enya with it”.

“She’s everything, isn’t she?” he beams. “Those strong melodies and beautiful soundscapes. And she’s from a border county, a musical family and a rural background. There are so many connections between my life and Enya’s that I think are really special.

“She obviously hasn’t a clue about me, but that’s something I’ll work on!”

• Jamie Duffy is out now.