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Enya Music Vids (35:53)

Enya (born Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin on May 17, 1961, Gaoth Dobhair, County Donegal, Ireland), sometimes presented in the media as Enya Brennan, is an Irish singer, instrumentalist and composer. She is Ireland's best-selling solo artist and is officially the country's second biggest musical export (after U2).Her works have earned her four Grammy Awards and an Academy Award nomination, and she is also famous for performing in 10 different languages during her lengthy career. Enya is an approximate transcription of how Eithne is pronounced in her native Irish, in the Donegal dialect.

Enya was born in Gaoth Dobhair, County Donegal, Ireland in 1961 to a musical family, the sixth 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. Enya attended Loreto Community School Milford Co. Donegal. Enya has four brothers and four sisters, several of whom formed the band An Clann As Dobhar in 1968. They renamed the band Clannad in the 1970s.

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 B-Side single "Eclipse" is actually a reversed and modified version of Enya's song "Deireadh An Tuath", from this 1987 album Enya.The song "Boadicea", also 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 (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", featuring Jay Tyree, reported to be named after Orinoco Studios (now Miloco Studios), where it was conceived, (although, one of the longest rivers in South America is the Orinoco River, which might be the true origin or its name) topped the charts in the United Kingdom, peaked at number 2 in Germany and the Watermark 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 Enya) were featured 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 had "River", "Watermark", and "Storms In Africa". "Book Of Days" was featured prominently in the movie Far and Away, with an English-lyric version created for the film then replacing the old Gaelic-language version on all pressings of the Shepherd Moons album from 1993 onwards.

In 1992, a re-mastered version of the Enya album was released as The Celts including a longer, modified version of "Portrait", which was re-named as "Portrait (Out of the Blue)". Four years after Shepherd Moons, she released the Grammy-winning The Memory of Trees (1995), another Top Five success in both, the UK and Germany as well as her first Top 10 album in the US. Singles released from the album were "Anywhere Is" and "On My Way Home".

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. A new song called "Sumiregusa" ("Wild Violet") was set to words from a Japanese poem Roma Ryan had written. In September 2004, the song 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. 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.

In November 2005, a new album, entitled Amarantine, was released. It reached the Top 10 in both the UK and the US, and peaked at number 3 in Germany. The album won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album for 2007, Enya's fourth.

Albums

Title + US Chart Positions

1. Enya (1987) 1m sales
2. Watermark US#25 (1988) 10m sales
3. Shepherd Moons US#17 (1991) 11m sales
4. The Celts (1992) 6.7m sales
5. The Memory of Trees US#9 (1995) 9.8m sales
6. Paint the Sky with Stars US#30 (1997) 10m sales
7. A Day Without Rain US#2 (2000) 15m sales
8. Amarantine US#6 (2005; expanded edition released 2006) 6.2m sales
9. And Winter Came (2008) (To be released November 10 2008)

Enya is a very private person who tries to keep her personal life apart from her musical career, even spending an estimated €250,000 on security measures for her home, Manderley Castle in Killiney, County Dublin (named after Maxim de Winter's house in her favourite book and black and white movie, Rebecca).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).
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 US$136 million). This was enough to take her to number 95 in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 of the 250 Wealthiest Irish People.She was also Ireland's richest woman at one stage.
Enya loves cats. In an interview published in 1988, when asked about pets, she replied: "I've got a cat. I love cats; at one stage I had 12. It was just bliss. They'd all lie around in the sun and then come up and climb around my neck."
Enya's favourite classical composer is Sergei Rachmaninoff. Her hobbies include watching romantic black and white films, collecting artwork, reading, and painting.

• Aired: on Oct 3rd at 12:14 pm
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