I remember the first time I ever heard Amy Winehouse sing. 2003.
I remember the first time I ever heard Declan O’Rourke sing. 2004
And I remember the first time I heard Niamh Bury sing. Last week.
The RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Award-nominated singer is going through that exciting/nervous period where she is being spoken of as “the rising voice breaking boundaries for Irish Folk”.
No pressure then. But when I spoke to Niamh last week, it seemed that she was coping nicely with it, no bother.
It helps of course that music is part of the Bury DNA.
“My sister is a classically-trained singer who sang opera for many years, my mum is a classically-trained pianist and music teacher, my brother a guitarist and pianist and my dad is a lovely folk singer and has a gorgeous voice,” she tells me.
“So I think it was just always around and something we did, whether it was on long car journeys, or Christmas parties.
“When I was in school and it was time to do the Christmas concerts or the Communion Mass. I was always up there auditioning myself for the nuns so, I think from an early age, I kind of knew that it was something I could do well and so it has progressed from there.”
Progress indeed. She remembers the lyrics of the first song she wrote when she was about seven years old.
“Baby when the sun is shining, your eyes just look like diamonds,” she recalls, laughing, but now Niamh has a voice of darkness and light, vulnerability and strength and a song-writing sensibility that was honed by the time she spent busking in Europe.
“When I finished university, I didn’t have a job and I was pretty skint,” she explains.
“But also it was a way for me to kind of organise my own gigs for free - I think that can be really daunting to young musicians.
“They don’t know how to go about getting gigs. So it’s, busking is definitely the easiest way to do that.
“What I would say though, is that I was doing it at a time when mics and amps were not present. So I would do it totally acoustic. I suppose I can project my voice quite loudly so I was able to kind of get away with that.
“Now, when you walk through Grafton Street on any day in the summer, there can be three buskers with quite large crowds around them, and they’ve got their card machines and it’s all very sophisticated.”
Back home, Niamh was one of the hosts of the now-famous traditional singing session, The Night Before Larry Got Stretched, in Dublin bar The Cobblestone and she has shared the stage with the likes of Ye Vagabonds and Martin Hayes.
But it is in her own right that Niamh is making waves with a stunning new album, Yellow Flowers, just released and featuring her own self-penned songs and one traditional ballad.
“Yes, I’ve got nine originals, which I’d written over a period of about five years, the strongest of a bunch I felt would work good as an album together,” explains Niamh.
“But I have one traditional song called Lovely Adam on there, my interpretation of Lovely Hannah which is the better known version.
“As most songwriters will tell you, some songs write themselves and some songs take months or years even, it depends really on the song.
“But I think it’s something I find really important for, I suppose my emotional wellbeing and my mental health as well, sometimes.
“So I really do use it as a tool to help keep myself grounded, I suppose,” she says.
That of course, could be said of Niamh’s live performances where an audience, when they are open to it, can get the same feelings.
As Niamh has said elsewhere - and this probably comes from her experiences in The Night Before Larry Got Stretched - you don’t even have to be the best singer to affect people.
“As long as you can tell a story and hold the room in some way, people will listen,” says Dublin-born Niamh.
“I think that’s a really important way to approach music and I’ve learned a lot through that. In my own writing and my own performance, I try to keep that in mind as well.
“I don’t really think there should be much of a separation between the performer and the audience and I think that sometimes that emphasis is placed too much on the performer. So if there are little moments in a performance that can bridge that gap, I think that’s really important.”
And it’s that mixture of the newly-written and the traditional that people respond to. A song might have been written centuries ago but can still move an audience to tears and I know of songs written in the past few decades which can do the same.
And despite the stereotypes surrounding young people, many of them are embracing the wealth of traditional songs that this country is famous for. Niamh agrees.
“I think it’s so important as well to connect with the younger generations coming up. Irish culture is also for them. They don’t always have to look to America or to England, although all those influences can be great, too, but think it’s really encouraging that so many young Irish artists are coming to the fore,” she says.
Niamh Bury is now in the vanguard of that and Yellow Flowers will no doubt send her into another realm.
The 10-track album is a thing of beauty, with Niamh’s mother the inspiration for Pianos in the Snow while the title track is a tribute to her late grandmother, Mary Bury, who, according to Niamh, “led a full life – difficult at times, thanks to the less than great men in her life – but who was always resilient, seeking solace in animals, nature and beauty”.
Mary should also find solace too in the gorgeous arrangements of her granddaughter’s songs - as will the rest of us.
Have a listen - you’ll remember where you were when you first heard Niamh Bury.
