If you read this, you already know why Enya is so popular – but from a mainstream rock/pop perspective, her popularity has always been an enigma. Webpage Thump UK has an article called “How exactly did Enya become one of the richest musicians in the world?”
Josh Baines writes:
“The clock strikes two. The sound rouses you from the half-sleep you semi-slipped into a few hours before. You’ve been having trouble with your sleeping recently, but you’re trying not to worry about it too much. It’s nothing, you tell yourself and others, it’ll pass because these things always do. Now awake, you stumble through the dark, head towards the bathroom where muscle memory kicks in and you find the light switch first time. Your face is reflected in gold and the gold makes an impression on the marble and the Lusso Stone Mardan Solid Surface Freestanding Stone Resin Bath. The 1760s never looked brighter and whiter. You are Enya and you live in Manderley Castle, Killiney, Ireland, and every single day you wonder how you ended up here.
She’s not the only one asking that either. After all, it’s not everyday that a reclusive, publicity-shy Irish new age musician sells 75 million albums worldwide and amasses a fortune of nearly one hundred million pounds, is it? Record sales alone put her above Duran Duran and Black Sabbath, and she’s on par with the unlikely trio of Bob Marley, Kiss, and Kenny G. Somehow this quiet, unobtrusive artist, who seems to have insulated themselves from the rigours of the industry, has transformed herself into a powerhouse, whilst remaining mythical, unknowable, distant and barely-there all while selling more records than pretty much anyone else out there.
The phone rings, and the morse code echoes through the house. You make it to the receiver just in time but because the phone rings so rarely these days you momentarily forget that you’re meant to be the person who says “Hello” first. So there is near silence, just the sound of two breaths transmitting themselves into the blank nothingness of the gap between telephones. The voice on the other end murmurs into hearing. The voice is rich, commanding, Antipodean, and it belongs to the film director Peter Jackson. He wants you to record a song for his upcoming Lord of the Rings film. The prospect is exciting and you arrange to make the trip over to New Zealand. You do not know at that time that you’ll eventually garner an Oscar nomination for the resulting song, nor do you know that you’ll perform it at the ceremony itself. The news that it’ll eventually hit 47 in the Austrian charts remains somewhere in the distant future.”
Read the article here.
Or simply answer the question: “How exactly did Enya become one of the richest musicians in the world?” with “By creating some truly amazing music.”