Enya is back—after a seven-year hiatus, she released her eighth studio album, Dark Sky Island, on Friday—and to celebrate, BuzzFeed has a nearly 6,000-word profile of the Irish singer, who lives in a castle 45 minutes away from Dublin. Despite having never toured and rarely even being seen in public, the 54-year-old is worth an estimated $136 million, "about double that of Chris Martin," writer Anne Helen Petersen notes; she lives next door to Bono and has sold 80 million records, sales Peterson compares to Beyonce's. All this while some deride her work as "Muzak" or, less derogatorily, "New Age" (a term Enya is "not fond of," as the AP recently put it). And now, in addition to doing a round of rare interviews, Enya is saying she might actually do a tour—a possibility that surprised even the chairman and CEO of her record label.
She's also giving a glimpse into her process: She's only ever worked with Nicky and Roma Ryan, a husband-and-wife team who write the lyrics and produce the songs—and who, in turn, only work with her. ("From the beginning, we never allowed an A&R man here, or anyone who wanted to deviate or move the album in any direction," Nicky says.) She met Nicky when he managed a band three of Enya's siblings and two of her uncles were in, from which Enya and Nicky ultimately split off. It was Nicky who convinced Enya to spell her name, Eithne, phonetically, and to drop her last name. After her 2008 Christmas-themed album, Enya tells Peterson, "I felt I didn’t know what to do. I thought I needed a break, and the music needed a break." Three years later, Roma shared some of her new poems with Enya, and they started working on Dark Sky Island. Click for the full piece. (Or check out a list of Irish celebs.)
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