AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Youtube Enya Greatest Hits8/29/2020
Enya is from Gweedore, County Donegal, Ireland, which she left in 1980 to join the Irish band Clannad, the group that already featured her older brothers and sisters.She stayed with Clannad for two years, then left, hooking up with producer Nicky Ryan and lyricist Roma Ryan, with whom she recorded film and television scores.
She began her musical career in 1980, when she briefly joined her family band Clannad, before leaving to pursue her solo career. Her album Watermark, which was released in 1988, propelled her to international recognition and she became known for her unique sound, which is characterized by voice-layering, folk melodies, synthesized backdrops and ethereal reverberations. The group subsequently gave her credit and paid a fee worth around 3 million. 39 Later in 1987, she appeared on Sinad OConnor s debut album The Lion and the Cobra, reciting Psalm 91 in Irish on the song Never Get Old. 40. Born into a musical family and raised in the Irish -speaking area of Gweedore in County Donegal, Enya began her music career when she joined her familys Celtic folk band Clannad in 1980 on keyboards and backing vocals. She left in 1982 with their manager and producer Nicky Ryan to pursue a solo career, with Ryans wife Roma Ryan as her lyricist. Enya developed her sound over the following four years with multitracked vocals and keyboards with elements of new age, Celtic, classical, church, and folk music. She signed with Warner Music UK, which granted her artistic freedom and minimal interference from the label. The commercial and critical success of Watermark (1988) propelled her to worldwide fame, helped by the international top-10 hit single Orinoco Flow. This was followed by the multi-million-selling albums Shepherd Moons (1991), The Memory of Trees (1995) and A Day Without Rain (2000). Sales of the latter and its lead single, Only Time, surged in the United States following its use in the media coverage of the September 11 attacks. Following Amarantine (2005) and And Winter Came. Enya took an extended break from music; she returned in 2012 and released Dark Sky Island (2015). She was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for May It Be, written for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Her name is anglicised as Enya Patricia Brennan, 9 where Enya is the phonetic spelling of how Eithne is pronounced in her native Ulster dialect of Irish; N Bhraonin translates to daughter of Brennan. The fifth of nine children, Enya was born into a Roman Catholic family of musicians. Her father, Leo Brennan, was the leader of the Slieve Foy Band, an Irish showband, and ran Leos Tavern in Meenaleck; her mother, Mire Brennan ( ne Duggan), who had distant Spanish roots and whose ancestors settled on Tory Island, 12 was an amateur musician who played in Leos band 13 14 and taught music at Gweedore Community School. Enyas maternal grandfather Aodh was the headmaster of the primary school in Dore, and her grandmother was a teacher there. Aodh was also the founder of the Gweedore Theatre company. She learned English at primary school and began piano lessons at age four. I had to do school work and then travel to a neighbouring town for piano lessons, and then more school work. I. remember my brothers and sisters playing outside. This one big book of scales, practising them over and over. When Enya turned eleven, her grandfather paid for her education 16 19 at a strict convent boarding school in Milford 13 run by nuns of the Loreto order, 12 where she developed a taste for classical music, art, Latin and watercolour painting. It was devastating to be torn away from such a large family, but it was good for my music. Enya left the school at 17 and studied classical music in college for one year 10 with the aim of becoming a piano teacher sort of person. Enya became an official and credited member by the time of their next album Fuaim (1981), which features a front cover photograph of her with the band. Nicky maintains it was never his intention to make Enya a permanent member, and realised she was fiercely independent. This sparked discussions between the two on the idea of using Enyas voice to form a choir of one, a concept based on the wall of sound technique by Phil Spector that interested them both. He added, It was short and only required a vote, I was a minority of one and lost. I decided to stand back and say nothing. Enya chose to leave to pursue a solo career with the Ryans, which initially caused some friction between the three and her family but she preferred being independent and disliked being confined in the group as somebody in the background. Nicky then suggested to Enya that either she return to Gweedore with no particular definite future, or live with him and Roma in their home, then located in the northern Dublin suburb of Artane, and see what happens, musically. After their bank denied them a loan, Enya sold her saxophone and gave piano lessons and the Ryans used what they could afford from their savings to build a recording facility named Aigle Studio, named after the French word for eagle, in a shed in their back garden, 22 19 and rented it out to other artists to cover its costs. They formed a musical partnership in the process with Nicky as Enyas producer and arranger and Roma her lyricist, 21 and became directors of their music company, Aigle Music. In the following two years, Enya developed her playing and composing by recording herself recite classical pieces on the piano and listening back to them. The process was repeated until she started to improvise sections and develop her own piano arrangements. Her first composition was An Taibhse Uaighneach, Irish for The Lonely Ghost. During this time, Enya played the synthesiser on Ceol Aduaidh (1983) by Mairad N Mhaonaigh and Frankie Kennedy 26 and performed with the duo and Mhaonaighs brother Gearid in their short lived group, Ragairne. She is credited as Eithne N Bhraonin on its liner notes. After several months of preparation, Enyas debut solo performance took place on 23 September 1983 at the National Stadium in Dublin that was televised for RT s music show Festival Folk. Nial Morris, a musician who worked with her during this time, recalled she was so nervous she could barely get on stage, and she cowered behind the piano until the gig was over. Among them was David Puttnam, who liked the tape and chose Enya to compose the soundtrack to the romantic comedy film The Frog Prince (1984), of which he served as executive producer. Enya wrote nine tracks for the film but found her songs were rearranged and orchestrated against her wishes by Richard Myhill except two tracks she sang on, The Frog Prince and Dreams, with the latters lyrics penned by Charlie McGettigan. Film editor Jim Clark later claimed the rearrangements were necessary as Enya found it difficult to compose to picture. Released in 1985 by Island Visual Arts, the album is the first commercial release that credits her as Enya. The change from Eithne to Enya originated from Nicky Ryan, who thought her name would be too difficult for people outside Ireland to pronounce correctly, and suggested the phonetic spelling of her name. Enya looked back on the project as a good career move, but a disappointing one as we werent part of it at the end. She then sang on three tracks on Ordinary Man (1985) by Christy Moore. Each episode was to feature a different composer at first, but director David Richardson liked the track so much, he selected her to compose the entire soundtrack. Unlike The Frog Prince, she worked with little interference which granted her freedom to establish her sound 17 that she adopted throughout her career, using multi-tracked vocals, keyboards, and percussion with elements of Celtic, classical, church and folk music. The latter promoted it with a new-age imprint on the packaging which Nicky later thought was a cowardly thing for them to do. The album gained enough public attention to reach number 8 on the Irish Albums Chart and number 69 on the UK Albums Chart. I Want Tomorrow was released as Enyas first single. Boadicea was sampled by The Fugees on their 1996 song Ready or Not; the group neither sought permission nor gave her credit, causing Enya to threaten legal action. The group subsequently gave her credit and paid a fee worth around 3 million.
0 Comments
read more
Leave a Reply. |