Chart entered : 15 October 1988
Chart peak : 1
Number of hits : 15*
One of the more enigmatic artists to feature here, Enya's first hit seemed to come out of nowhere, somewhat akin to Wuthering Heights a decade earlier. That's not the only thing the artists have in common.
Eithne Ni Bhraonain ( or Enya Brennan ) was born in Donegal in 1961 to a Gaelic-speaking and intensely musical family. While she was at school her older siblings Maire, Pol and Ciaran and twin uncles Noel and Padraig Dugain formed the folk band Clannad. She went to college to study classical music in 1979 . In 1980 she was invited to contribute to a track on Clannad's fourth album "Crann Uil". Enya provides backing vocals, keyboards and percussion on "Gathering Mushrooms" one of the English language tracks on what is firmly an Irish folk album. Nevertheless it was their first album to make a showing in the UK charts.
Enya was allowed to become a full member for the making of their next album "Fu'aim" which came out in 1982. It's less precious than its predecessor as the group groped towards a fuller sound that would sell internationally and there's a couple of really lovely instrumentals led by Pol's flute . Enya did the lead vocals on the track "An Tull" and there's footage of her performing it on an Irish TV programme with her eyes shut and looking absolutely petrified.
When the album failed to break through there was a band meeting at which it was decided to dispense with the services of long time manager and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife Roma. Enya made the decision to stick with the couple and have them nurture a solo career. She moved in with them in Dublin and started recording music in a makeshift studio in their garden shed. She gave some piano lessons and in 1983 played synthesiser on an album by the duo Mairead Ni Mahaonaigh and Frankie Kennedy who were also clients of the Ryans. She recorded two piano instrumentals for a locally released cassette which led to a nervous live appearance on the music show Festival Folk .
The Ryans' next move was to send out a demo tape to film producers. It caught the ear of David Puttnam who commissioned her to soundtrack his 1984 film The Frog Prince. Enya wrote nine tunes for it but was unhappy that only two of them were used as performed by her, the rest beingh rearranged and orchestrated by seventies one hit wonder Richard Myhill. Mind you, given how desperately insipid those two songs, "The Frog Prince" and "Dreams",. are, it's not surprising Puttnam felt obliged to call on someone to tweak the others.
The following year she provided some backing vocal on Christy Moore's album Ordinary Man but declined an invitation to work with Mike Oldfield on his Pictures in the Dark single that year. She then received a commission to write the music for a BBC documentary series The Celts. This came out as her first solo album "Enya" in 1987 before the series was broadcast. It introduced her trademark sound of massed choral vocals, synthetic textures, minimal use of beats with a range of influences from classical, church music and Irish folk. The album is front loaded with the vocal tracks like the single "I Want Tomorrow " ( nice in parts but too sedate to break through ) leaving the second side almost entirely instrumental It reached 69 in the UK. In the US it was packaged as a "New Age" album which apparently displeased the Ryans although I dare say they're happy enough with the Grammys Enya consistently wins for "Best New Age Album" . The album reached number 10 when re-released in 1992 as "The Celts" with its title track making number 29 as a single.
Enya was then approached by Rob Dickens chairman of Warner Music UK and a long time Clannad fan. He loved The Celts and signed Enya for an advance of £75,000. She set to work on her next album "Watermark" which was released in September 1988 . Dickins asked her and the Ryans to choose a track for a single and they went for "Orinoco Flow".
The Popular take is here
* Enya has been credited on two hits where a sample of her track "Boadicea" has been used but I've only counted it once.
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