Anti-fame, publicity-shy and fond of taking years out between albums, the 54-year-old singer songwriter has sold more than 80 million records worldwide without doing any concerts, a phenomenon labelled Enyanomics.
Defined as the inexplicable growth in sales of an artist in inverse relation to how much exposure they have, it is how Enya has rocked since she urged us all to sail away in her 1988 hit Orinoco Flow.
Yet with album sales in terminal decline thanks to downloading and piracy, and record companies pushing live performances more than ever, could Enya’s first “gig” be just a whisper away with her latest album Dark Sky Island? As ever, the Celtic queen is keeping her cards close to her chest.
“It’s much easier to talk about touring now that stage productions are massive.
"Today we can have an orchestra but in 1988 it wasn’t really seen as practical, especially for a debut album. I don’t know.
"The album has just happened so there’s a lot to think about. I’m just going along with it. I almost quite like not knowing what’s coming next.”
Enya has just returned from New York, where she was introduced to the Metropolitan Opera’s pioneering “live” series when her performance was simultaneously beamed into cinemas around the world.
“That was an idea that has been strongly put forward, so we’ll see,” she says.
One gets the impression that whatever happens, Enya will have the final say, with the help of the couple she describes as her “musical family”, producer and manager Nicky Ryan and his lyricist wife Roma.
Having managed Enya’s real musical family in Clannad, the group including three of her siblings, it was Nicky who persuaded the then 20-year-old to go solo in a move that prompted an “it’s the Ryans or us” showdown with her parents and a falling out with her siblings that dragged on for years.
Asked whether she still sees her family in County Donegal, Enya is characteristically guarded, although she chuckles at the notion of being forced into anything against her will.
“You make it sound very dramatic, like I was kidnapped or something!”
The truth is she craved independence. Having trained as a classical pianist, Enya toyed with the idea of becoming an opera singer before “surprising” herself by agreeing to join Clannad.
“I was very strong in that regard. Anything that I thought of, any step I had to take had to be my own step.
"Every decision is my decision and that comes from being at boarding school at 11 years of age.
“When you’re in a big family, your older brothers and sisters make all the decisions. Then suddenly I found myself at school, hearing my own voice saying ‘What would you like to do?’ So I got very used to that.”
Born Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin in 1961, the sixth of nine children, “Enya Brennan” proudly tells me her grandmother was “the first female drummer in Ireland” and recalls having mixed feelings about her stage debut as Red Riding Hood when she was three years old.
“I loved it but it was odd being out front. You’re looking up at the stage and all of a sudden you’re looking down at the audience at such a young age.”
Solo singing competitions were “a part of life” in the Gaelic-speaking village of Gweedore, where her father ran the Irish folk music venue Leo’s Tavern and her mother taught music at the local school. “There’s this lovely story about Dad,” she says, in a rare moment of candour.
“He played a lot of beautiful Irish ballads combined with the big band sound, like Glenn Miller but he was self-taught. One day he tried to write music.
“He said, ‘Daughter, I sharpened my pencil, took out a manuscript and I sat there all day and I didn’t write anything, but I feel that that’s come through your work’.
He has lived my success and loves the fact he passed on his passion for music.” Read more EXPRESS
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