Irish DJ Jazzy Releases Debut Album Peace and Patience After Billion Streams

On Saturday night, Jazzy will walk out at Dublin's 3Arena in front of a home crowd and play tracks like No Bad Vibes and Someday. It is the biggest show of her career, and she says so herself, calling it the "biggest milestone of my career to date". That is a notable claim from someone who has already played a set at Coachella and supported Calvin Harris.

The gig comes alongside the release of Peace and Patience, her first full-length album. The Irish singer and DJ has been streamed more than a billion times and has a monthly listenership above 10 million. She has put out dozens of singles, but never an album. She told BBC Newsbeat that the idea had always sat in the back of her mind, and that years of smaller projects gave her the experience to feel the moment was right.

Jazzy is 30, and her real name is Yasmine Byrne. She has been releasing music for more than five years, and some of her biggest tracks have come through collaborations with Sonny Fodera, Rossi. and KILIMANJARO. Beyond Calvin Harris, she has worked with a number of industry heavyweights.

The album arrives at an unusual time for dance music. Spotify previously told Newsbeat that since 2020, listening to the genre among under-25s has grown by more than 73% globally. Dance acts dominated festival line-ups this summer, and Radio 1's Big Weekend gave every stage on its opening night to dance music. Even so, artists in the genre have tended to drift away from albums, preferring EPs and singles. Jazzy has noticed. It feels "a lot different now", she says, "with people kind of siding with virality rather than quality of music". She says she did not think about going viral while making the record. She wanted something true to her that sounded like a Jazzy album, and she prefers to let things happen organically.

Her own start was far from online. She began her career in Dublin's club scene as part of a group called Powerful Creative Minds, and she worries that route is narrowing. When she first started going out, she recalls, there were many more nightclubs, and the contrast with today is "sad". She accepts that dance music has a home on the internet, but argues club culture matters and needs to be kept going.

The numbers she is pointing to are stark. The Night Time Industries Association's latest figures suggest about 12 venues are closing across the UK every month, and almost 30% of the night time economy has been lost since the coronavirus pandemic. Jazzy describes a similar problem in Ireland. "I hope to God that it doesn't disappear, the club scene altogether," she says, adding that everyone needs to put a hand in to keep it going.

The album itself is mostly the uplifting dance music her fans know, but she describes it as more personal than her usual work. One track, Invisible, departs from her upbeat releases. It draws on a bad experience she had in the music industry, and she calls it "like my first ever diss track". She hopes listeners learn a little more about her, since opening up about life experiences was one of her goals, and she says there is a message from her in each song.

After Dublin, Jazzy takes Peace and Patience on tour across the UK, starting next month.