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'''Enya''', birth name '''Eithne Ní Bhraonáin''' (sometimes presented in the media as the [[Anglicisation|Anglicised]] '''Enya Brennan'''; born [[May 17]] [[1961]]), is the [[Republic of Ireland]]'s best-selling solo artist and one of Ireland's best known [[musician]]s. As a musical group, ''Enya'' is collaboration between three people: Enya herself, who composes and performs the music; [[Nicky Ryan]], who produces the albums, and [[Roma Ryan]], who writes the [[lyrics]] in various [[language]]s. ''Enya'' is an approximate [[Transcription (linguistics)|transcription]] of how ''Eithne'' is pronounced in her native [[Irish language|Irish]]. Enya is one of the biggest selling female artists in history, and was the world's biggest selling female artist of 2001 and 2002. She has been unofficially ranked as the 12th biggest-selling female artist in the world in |
'''Enya''', birth name '''Eithne Ní Bhraonáin''' (sometimes presented in the media as the [[Anglicisation|Anglicised]] '''Enya Brennan'''; born [[May 17]] [[1961]]), is the [[Republic of Ireland]]'s best-selling solo artist and one of Ireland's best known [[musician]]s. As a musical group, ''Enya'' is collaboration between three people: Enya herself, who composes and performs the music; [[Nicky Ryan]], who produces the albums, and [[Roma Ryan]], who writes the [[lyrics]] in various [[language]]s. ''Enya'' is an approximate [[Transcription (linguistics)|transcription]] of how ''Eithne'' is pronounced in her native [[Irish language|Irish]]. Enya is one of the biggest selling female artists in history, and was the world's biggest selling female artist of 2001 and 2002. She has been unofficially ranked as the 12th biggest-selling female artist in the world in [[2006]]. |
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==Biography== |
==Biography== |
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Revision as of 23:36, 30 July 2006
Enya | |
|---|---|
| Eithne Ní Bhraonáin Enya, 2002 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore), Ireland |
| Years active | 1980–present |
Enya, birth name Eithne Ní Bhraonáin (sometimes presented in the media as the Anglicised Enya Brennan; born May 17 1961), is the Republic of Ireland's best-selling solo artist and one of Ireland's best known musicians. As a musical group, Enya is collaboration between three people: Enya herself, who composes and performs the music; Nicky Ryan, who produces the albums, and Roma Ryan, who writes the lyrics in various languages. Enya is an approximate transcription of how Eithne is pronounced in her native Irish. Enya is one of the biggest selling female artists in history, and was the world's biggest selling female artist of 2001 and 2002. She has been unofficially ranked as the 12th biggest-selling female artist in the world in 2006.
Biography
Musical upbringing
Eithne was born in Gweedore, County Donegal, in Ireland in 1961 to a musical family, the fourth youngest of nine children. Her grandparents were in a band that played throughout Ireland, her father was the leader of the Slieve Foy Band before opening a pub, and her mother played in a dance band and later taught music at the Gweedore Comprehensive School. Eithne has four brothers and four sisters, several of whom formed the band An Clann As Dobhair in 1968. They renamed the band Clannad in the 1970s.
In 1980, Eithne joined Clannad, the band composed of her siblings Máire (Moya), Pól, and Ciarán and twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan. Eithne played the keyboard and provided backing vocals on their albums Crann Úll (1980) and Fuaim (1982). In 1982, shortly before Clannad became famous for "Theme From Harry's Game", producer and manager Nicky Ryan left the group and Eithne joined him to start her own solo career.
Solo career
Eithne, working with Nicky and his wife Roma, recorded two solo instrumental songs called "An Ghaoth Ón Ghrian" ("The Solar Wind") and "Miss Clare Remembers" that were released on the 1983 album Touch Travel. Eithne was first credited as Enya for writing some of the music for the 1984 movie The Frog Prince which was released on a soundtrack album of the same title. Another early appearance on record followed in 1987, where Enya provided spoken (not sung) vocals on Sinéad O'Connor's debut album, The Lion And The Cobra. The title of the album is a partial English translation of Enya's Gaelic reading of Psalms 91:11-13 on the song "Never Get Old."
Enya was contracted to provide music for the soundtrack of the 1986 BBC television documentary The Celts.
The music she produced was featured on her first solo album, Enya (1987), but it attracted little attention at the time. The song "Boadicea" from this album would later be sampled by The Fugees on their single "Ready or Not" (1996), causing a brief stir because the group neither sought permission from Enya nor gave her credit initially, and by Mario Winans, who did give her credit. (Ironically the Winans track, "I Don't Wanna Know" which features a rap by P. Diddy and is officially credited to all three artists, became Enya's highest charting single in the US, when it peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 in 2004.)
Enya achieved a breakthrough in her career in 1988 with the album Watermark, which featured the hit song "Orinoco Flow" (sometimes known as "Sail Away"). "Orinoco Flow" topped the charts in the United Kingdom, and the album sold eight million copies.
Three years later, she followed with another hit album, Shepherd Moons, which sold ten million copies and earned Enya her first Grammy Award. The songs "On Your Shore" and "Exile" (from Watermark) and "Epona" (from The Celts) were featured strongly in the 1991 film L.A. Story. "Ebudae" was also featured on the soundtrack to the Robin Williams film Toys, while the 1990 film Green Card made use of her Watermark track, "Exile." Most notably, the song "Book Of Days" was featured prominently in the movie Far and Away.
Despite winning Grammys for "Best New Age Album", Enya does not personally classify her music as belonging to that genre. Four years later, she released the Grammy-winning The Memory of Trees (1995).
In 1997, Enya released her greatest hits collection, Paint The Sky With Stars: The Best of Enya, which featured two new songs. She was offered the chance to compose the score for James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, but she declined. Cameron subsequently asked composer James Horner to adapt Enya's style for his score. The eventual choice of Norwegian vocalist Sissel Kyrkjebø resulted in work that some sources erroneously credited to Enya. 1997 also saw Enya featured on the third volume of the charity album "A Very Special Christmas" singing the gaelic version of Silent Night: Oiche Chiun.
Following a five-year break, she released the Grammy winning A Day Without Rain in 2000 featuring 37 minutes of new material (34 minutes on the US version). After the September 11, 2001 attacks, her song "Only Time" (from A Day Without Rain) was used as a backdrop in many radio and TV reports about the attacks. She initially frowned upon this use, especially when many bootlegged versions of "Only Time" mixed with sound effects from the attack began to appear. She agreed to release a special edition of the song with funds going to the families of victims. Many Enya fans, however, are resentful that her music has been linked with the attacks; an example of this occurred on a 2002 appearance on CNN's Larry King Live when images of battle in Afghanistan were shown on screen as she performed "May It Be", a song with no war connection. This sparked some complaints within Enya's fan community.
Enya is self-admittedly a slow worker when it comes to composing music. As a result, fans have had to wait as long as five years between albums. In September 2004, a new song, set to words from a Japanese poem and called "Sumiregusa" ("Wild Violet") was unveiled in Japan as part of an advertising campaign for Panasonic. In announcing the new recording, Warner Music Japan stated that Enya's next album was scheduled for release (in Japan at least) in mid-November. After a brief flurry of excitement among fans, Enya issued a press release on her official Web site on 19 September stating that this was a mistake and no new album was immediately forthcoming. (A "mix" album containing "Sumiregusa" and songs from various other similar-sounding artists circulated on file-sharing services under the name Sumiregusa.)
On November, 2005 a new album, entitled Amarantine, was released.
Personal life
Enya is a very private person who tries to keep her personal life apart from her musical career, even by spending an estimated €250,000 on security measures for her home, Manderley Castle (named after her favourite book and black and white movie Rebecca), Victoria Road Killiney, County Dublin. Despite this, around mid-August 2005, there were two separate security breaches at Enya's home, and she was present on both occasions (her security system includes a panic room). [1]
According to many rumours, Enya lives there alone. However, this impression is exaggerated. She says she leads a normal life, invites over friends, listens to classical music, but she also says that silence is her music, as stated in an interview with Enya in "Enya in Conversation." Recently she has traveled to Taiwan to promote her album Amarantine in December. She enjoys visiting Australia mainly because she has a brother or sister living there, and she also enjoys the city of Sydney very much. Enya's favorite book is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Her childhood hero was Santa Claus. Her favourite colours are watercolours. When asked three words to describe herself, she stated "romantic, honest, and organized." Enya's favorite foods are Indian and French. She loves cats. When she was a child, her father owned a pub called Leo's Tavern.
In 2006, Enya made it to the number three spot in the ranks of wealthy UK and Irish entertainers with an estimated fortune of €109 million (i.e., £75 million or $136 million). This was enough to take her to number 95 in the Times Richlist 2006 of the 250 Wealthiest Irish People.
Music
On her latest album, Amarantine, Enya also sings in Japanese and Loxian, a language invented by Roma Ryan. A number of Enya's songs are sung entirely in Irish or Latin, with others containing the hitherto-mentioned mixed with English or English by itself. Roma Ryan has written lyrics in Welsh, Irish, Esperanto, Latin, Spanish, French and even languages created by J. R. R. Tolkien. Enya has performed songs relating to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, including 1991's "Lothlórien" (instrumental), 2001's "May It Be" (sung in English and Quenya), and "Aníron" (in Sindarin)—the last two which she composed appearing on the soundtrack of Peter Jackson's movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. "May It Be" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song at the 2002 ceremonies, but it lost to Randy Newman's "If I Didn't Have You" from Monsters, Inc. Enya has given several live performances on various television shows, events and ceremonies (her most recent appearance was at a tribute to the Brennan family that took place in Letterkenny), but she has yet to do a concert. She has said, though, that she would love to do it some day, and would consider it to be a great challenge.
Selected discography
Albums
- Enya (1987)
- Watermark (1988)
- Shepherd Moons (1991)
- The Celts (1992)
- The Memory of Trees (1995)
- Paint the Sky with Stars (1997)
- A Day Without Rain (2000)
- Amarantine (2005)
DVD Release
In 2000, Warner Music released Enya: The Video Collection on DVD in Europe and Asia, collecting all her videos from "Orinoco Flow" up to and including "Wild Child", except for the video from "Book of Days", which was replaced by a live TV performance due to licensing complications relating to the video's use of footage from the film Far and Away. This release was a successor to an earlier collection of videos entitled Moonshadows, which was released on VHS and laserdisc in 1992. The DVD release also included interviews and featurettes on the making of two videos.
A North American (Region 1) release of the Video Collection DVD was announced on several occasions during 2000-2001, but did not occur; the reason for which has never been officially stated. At one point it was announced that the release had been delayed in order to allow the inclusion of the video for "May it Be", while the (now defunct) Enya.org fansite reported that a dispute over the sound quality of the release led to it being withdrawn. As of 2005, The Video Collection is still considered to be "coming soon" by some North American online retailers although bootleg copies from Asia have circulated at the retail level in some parts of Region 1 since 2000. Despite the release of a new CD by Enya in November 2005, the Region 1 edition of the DVD collection remains in limbo and there has been as yet no announcement of an updated DVD release in other parts of the world.
As of 2006, the only official release of an Enya video on DVD in North America has been "May it Be" which was included on the DVD release for The Fellowship of the Ring.
Misconceptions
It is a common misconception that Enya recorded the song "Adiemus". This is false, as it was recorded by a band of the same name. This song is often distributed through file sharing networks with this erroneous information. Another song falsely attributed to Enya through file sharing is the song "Secret World" by Ronan Hardiman from his "Solas" album. Similarly, recordings by Loreena McKennitt, Sissel Kyrkjebø, Enigma, and Máire (Moya) Brennan (her sister) have also often been mistakenly identified as Enya recordings (particularly those Sissel recorded for the Enya-like soundtrack to Titanic.) Some have also said that the "Everyone's Gone To The Moon" music from the game Final Fantasy IV sounds very similar to Enya, with rumors in some forum boards that she was initially asked to produce music for the series, but after declining the developers chose someone who was most-similar sounding. As far as anyone knows, this is purely a myth, however, and there has never been any conclusive truth to verify this.
'Backmasking' And Enya
The 1989 single 'Eclipse' is a reversed version of the song 'Deireadh An Tuath', from the albums 'Enya' (1987) and 'The Celts' (1992). It does, however, contain an overlay of new sounds and vocals to mask the reversal. Similarly, reversing 'Deireadh An Tuath' makes it sound very-much like 'Eclipse' for those who have never heard 'Eclipse'.
This is similar to backmasking, though not exact: the reversed version does not contain any 'hidden messages' in this example.
Note: 'Eclipse' does not contain any reversed extracts from the similar-sounding song 'Dan Y Dŵr' from those aforementioned albums. Confusion could arise here as these songs — 'Deireadh An Tuath' and 'Dan Y Dŵr' — both have the same music but each has its lyrics in a different language. The durations of the two songs differs only by about two seconds.
See also
- Best selling music artists
- New Age music
- Clannad
- Vangelis
- Jon Anderson
- Lisa Gerrard
- Jean-Michel Jarre
- Patrick O'Hearn
- Kitaro
- Gweedore
- Roger Eno
- Deep Forest
- Eloy Fritsch
- Mike Oldfield
References
- Billboard Album Rankings - Enya
- Billboard Singles Rankings - Enya
- 'Eclipse' reversal referenced on official Enya site
External links
- Official Aigle Music Website created by Lee Tobin: www.enya.com
- The Enya Discography
- Unity - the Official Enya Forum
- Enya at the Internet Movie Database