Enya living as recluse in Victorian castle
You don’t see many modern celebrities who have this much reverence for their private lives. She mesmerised the world with her eerie, warbling music and ethereal voice, but Enya’s character is the polar opposite of her pop star status.
She’s never been seen stumbling out of a bar, gotten caught up in dating rumours or even so much as appeared on social media. The Irish singer-songwriter spends her days as a recluse, working on her next album.
She worked on her last album, Dark Sky Island for almost 10 years, and said in that time she avoided listening to any other music so she could ensure total originality. She onceclaimed to have never bought an album — to keep her own work as original as possible.
Her songs are painstakingly put together, often overdubbed with vocals more than 500 times and featuring languages anywhere from English, Gaelic, and even fictional ones from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. She has won four Grammys and got an Oscar nod, for her work on the movies soundtrack.
Only spotted out in public twice in the past decade, Enya hides away in her vast Victorian home near Dublin, refusing to respond to fan letters, and avoiding even friends and family.
Despite shifting more than 75 million albums globally, the single 54-year-old — whose £91 million ($169 million) fortune was last week revealed to make her the richest woman in British and Irish music history — has never even toured as a solo artist.
Ignoring the demand for live gigs in the US and Asia, Enya has restricted her appearances to a few intimate evenings on Irish and US TV shows. While she claims it would be impossible to reproduce her studio sound live, music insiders suspect she is simply unwilling to disrupt her quiet lifestyle.
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