IT'S not every junior infants class that has the playing of Beatles' songs as part of its curriculum. In Naimee Coleman's case, it was a forward thinking teacher at Chapelizod National School who gave her a grounding in the merits of pop music as a possible future career option. Or at least she thinks it was. She was only five years old at the time, so she can't fully remember the exact details.
Music soundtrack were the two main things in my life then," recalls Naimee. "I suppose I was lucky in that I seemed to be surrounded by musical people all of the time. When you're so young, it doesn't occur to you to try and be modest about whatever talent you have. You just do whatever makes you happy. That's why I was always singing."
Going through school as a veritable songbird helped Naimee to receive both approval and encouragement from teachers, a confidence booster that certainly helped with her current combination of self assurance and perfectly measured ego.
"In a way, singing Beatles tunes charmed most of them - that a young girl actually knew some of the music that was close to their hearts."
Naimee Coleman is the latest in at long line of intelligent and assertive - female singer/songwriters who have emerged over the past few years to effectively challenge the laddish end of the pop market. At almost 20, she is also one of the youngest, one of the most attractive, and Irish - three factors that have heaped considerable, occasionally unwanted attention onto her shoulders.
She began writing songs at 14, initially with a friend, and then solo. She wrote her first "real" song at 15 - the same age that she began to beep a diary. These therapeutic pastimes, she claims quite innocently just happened to coincide with the break up of her parents marriage.
It made me re assess the fact that people have problems when they're grown ups. It certainly shatters the illusion of parental perfection and infallibility. The combination of that, and other things that were happening in my life then made me think a lot. The break up also made me look at things more objectively, and focused me as a person. Ultimately, it made me realise that you've got to have a balance in life, that there are as many bad things as good."
Her first stage appearance was at the Baggot Inn in 1993. Naimee had been visiting the Dublin rock venue to see a band, and had been asked offhandedly by a promoter if she was a musician. She said yes. Three days later she was singing in front of her first paying audience.
"I don't know where my answer came from," she says somewhat ingenuously. "I'm usually the kind of person who doesn't force things."
Shortly after, in February 1994, while in a Dublin band called the Wilde Oscars, she won the 2FM
Yoplait Song Contest. Cue attention from record companies, whose attempts at wooing her into signing a record contract met with firm refusals. On leaving the group, however, Naimee inevitably had second thoughts, and contacted a spurned EMI in a feverish bid to renege on her stubbornness. "I begged, basically!" The corporate giant, surprised but not stupid, relented.
After what seemed like an interminable wait for Naimee, her debut album, Silver Wrists, has just been released and she will perform around Ireland in February. Part serious and pretty in a non superficial way, the album highlights a potentially excellent songwriter. The songs were written within the four years, and as such represent a lyrical diary of someone who takes life with no small amount of salt. Does Naimee grow weary of the disdainful thirty and fortysomethings who have forgotten heir own emotionally turbulent teenage years?
"I get that a lot - how could I have experienced all that I write about? I write songs about things that have happened to me, and not hypothetical situations," she says, at pains to dispel the notion that the sentiments contained within her songs are insincere. "My lyrics are very important to me, with most of them being written when I'm overcome by some feeling or another. Being heartbroken at 16, or any age for that matter, is the biggest deal in the whole world.
"In that sense, a lot of my songs could be considered serious instead of light hearted. I find I write a lot more when I'm thinking and focused. They're all quite honest. The conflict is that I don't want my songs to be interpreted as sad, because I'm a not a sad person. Generally speaking, I'm quite happy. New material will concentrate on the more positive aspects of my life."
And with that, Naimee leaves a trail of hair wisps and surreptitious backwards glances from a number of males strolling down Grafton Street. Her mission? She is going to present a copy of Silver Wrists to her secondary school music teacher in Loreto College on Stephen's Green. To thank same for all the encouragement and guidance afforded to Naimee throughout those frustrating uniformed years, perhaps?
"Er, hot really," she replies, with a hint of intractability. "I was just told I'd get nowhere with all this pop stuff."