Color Palettes, Formulas, and Software! (free)

Home › E › Enya

 · albums · lyrics · movies
genres +
links +
Talk about this article @ Wikipedia


Musical upbringing

Eithne was born in Gweedore, County Donegal, in Ireland in 1961 to a musical family. 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 MAire, PAl, and CiarAn and twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan. Eithne played the keyboard and provided backing vocals on their albums ''Crann All'' (1980) and ''Fuaim'' (1982). In 1982 (shortly before Clannad became famous for "Theme From Harry's Game"), producer and manager Nicky Ryan left Clannad 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 An Ghrian" ("The Solar Wind") and "Miss Clare Remembers" that were released on the 1984 album ''Touch Travel''. Eithne was first credited as ''Enya'' for writing some of the music for the 1984 movie ''The Frog Prince''. She was contracted to provide music for the soundtrack of the 1986 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 (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 Britain, 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. 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 resulted in work that some sources erroneously credited to Enya.Following a five year wait, she released ''A Day Without Rain'' in 2000 featuring 34 minutes of new material. 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.
''Amarantine'', Enya's latest CD, was released on November 21st, 2005.]]
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 2004, Enya was reputedly working on her next album, but no release date had been set. 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 is immediately forthcoming.On September 23, 2005, Roma Ryan on behalf of Enya announced through the official Enya Forum that the new album, ''Amarantine'', would be released in November.http://unity.enya.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11520 On September 29 and October 3, 2005, there were two separate security breaches at Enya's home - Manderley Castle in south Dublin, which has already had an estimated a250,000 spent on security measures. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4305058.stm http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sgmD1yfc0tDmksgdL11Zs5FWAE.asp

Music

: Two versions of this album were released. The original release was distributed by Atlantic Records. When reissued by Warner Music under the title ''The Celts'' through the Reprise Records label, the original-release track entitled "Portrait" was replaced with a nearly identical (but longer and played with different instrumentation) piece of music entitled "Portrait (Out of the Blue)."

: The original release from Geffen Records is eleven tracks long. The Reprise Records version is twelve tracks long with the extra track titled "Storms in Africa II."

: There are at least two versions of ''Shepherd Moons''. The "Book of Days" track is sung in Irish in the 1991 version of the "Shepherd Moons" album. An English-language version of this song was subsequently used in the soundtrack of the movie ''Far and Away.'' Coinciding with that, all pressings of the album, single, and collections since mid-1992 include the English-language version in lieu of the original.

: Three versions of ''A Day Without Rain'' were released. Aside from the general release in the US and UK, the Canadian release included an additional track, while the Japanese one had two additional tracks.

: This album includes no Gaelic, but three songs are writen in an invented language called Loxian, described by Enya and Roma Ryan as "a futuristic language from a distant planet." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1892820,00.html This idea arose from writing ''May it Be'' and ''AnAron'' in Tolkien's Elvish languages. In addition, a 1985 soundtrack album ''The Frog Prince'' (a.k.a. ''French Lesson'') contains music composed by Enya, but not performed by her; a later CD release (1995) added two previously unreleased vocal tracks by her.=

Singles

=
Over the years, Enya has released a large number of CD singles, many of which included bonus tracks that were not included on any of the albums:

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''. A North American (Region 1) release was announced but did not occur, the reason for which has never been officially stated. 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. Despite the release of a new CD by Enya in November 2005, the DVD collection remains in limbo.

Music Rankings

''Albums''{| class="wikitable"
|rowspan="2"|Year
|rowspan="2"| Album
|colspan="2"| Chart positions
|-
|US Billboard Top 200
|UK
|-
|1989
|''Watermark''
| #25
| #5
|-
|1992
|''Shepherd Moons''
| #17
| #1
|-
|1996
|''The Memory of Trees''
| #9
| #5
|-
|1998
|''Paint the Sky With Stars'' (Best of)
| #30
| #4
|-
|2001
|''A Day Without Rain''
| #2
| #6
|-
|2005
|''Amarantine''
| #6
| #8
|-
|}
UK data from Guinness Hit Singles and Albums book.''Singles''{| class="wikitable"
|rowspan="2"|Year
|rowspan="2"| Title
|colspan="5"| Chart positions
|rowspan="2"| Album
|-|US Hot 100
|US Modern Rock
|US Mainstream Rock
|US Adult Contemporary
|UK
|-
| 1988
| "Orinoco Flow"
| #24
| #6
| -
| #7
| #1
| ''Watermark''
|-
| 1988
| "Evening Falls..."
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #20
| ''Watermark''
|-
| 1989
| "Storms In Africa (Part II)"
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #41
| ''Watermark''
|-
| 1991
| "Caribbean Blue"
| #79
| -
| #3
| #29
| #13
| ''Shepherd Moons''
|-
| 1991
| "How Can I Keep From Singing?"
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #32
| ''Shepherd Moons''
|-
| 1992
| "Book Of Days"
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #10
| ''Shepherd Moons''
|-
| 1992
| "The Celts"
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #29
| ''The Celts''
|-
| 1995
| "Anywhere Is"
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #7
| ''The Memory of Trees''
|-
| 1996
| "On My Way Home"
| -
| -
| -
| -
| #26
| ''The Memory of Trees''
|-
| 1997
| "Only If..."
| #88
| -
| -
| -
| #43
| ''Paint the Sky with Stars''
|-
| 2000
| "Only Time"
| #10
| -
| -
| #1
| #32
| ''A Day Without Rain''
|-
| 2001
| "Wild Child"
| -
| -
| -
| #12
| -
| ''A Day Without Rain''
|-
|2005
| "Amarantine"
| -
| -
| -
| #26
| -
| ''Amarantine''
|-