A castle full of cats, fear of love, stalkers, songs sung in Tolkien… strange life of reclusive £91m Enya
SHE is wealthier than Adele, has sold more records than One Direction and lives in a castle next door to Bono.
Yet despite her phenomenal success, Irish singer-songwriter Enya has never been snapped stumbling out of a nightclub. Nor has she ever dated a fellow star or been involved in a bitchy celebrity catfight.
As one pal admitted: “She’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. You wouldn’t go for a few pints with her.”
Despite shifting more than 75million albums globally, the single 59-year-old — whose £91million 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.
Instead, she spends her days as a recluse.
Only spotted out in public twice in the past decade, she hides away in her vast Victorian home near Dublin, refusing to respond to fan letters.
Even close relatives barely see her. Her companions are her cats, at one point she had a dozen.
To complete her isolation she bans herself from listening to other artists’ music and once claimed to have never bought an album — to keep her own work as original as possible.
She spends nearly all her waking hours with a much older married couple who for 30 years have helped create her eerie, warbling music.
Songs are painstakingly put together, often overdubbed with vocals more than 500 times.
They are sung in a bizarre mix of languages. Initially a mixture of English and Gaelic, she now records in Sindarin and Quenya, both created by author JRR Tolkien, and Loxian — which she invented herself with her songwriters.
Much of her enormous success comes down to a melancholic coincidence. She was
on a promotional tour of the US in 2001 and her single, Only Time, was seized on by news network CNN as a moody backdrop to the 9/11 footage. It was quickly released as a charity single and she gained a continent of devotees.
Perhaps it is no surprise her lifestyle has left her unable to find love. She says men find her “dark and difficult”.
So what is the truth behind our most successful — and most mysterious — female artist?
Born Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, in Gweedore, Co Donegal, Ireland, she grew up as one of nine siblings.
She was a shy child who loved playing the piano and singing, later explaining how the pandemonium of a large family instilled her lifelong love of being alone and describing silence as a luxury.
At 19 she joined her family’s band, Celtic music group Clannad, on synth and backing vocals. She left two years later, moving into the Dublin home of
Nicky Ryan, 69, the group’s producer, and his wife Roma, 61.
Following her acrimonious split from Clannad, the three wrote music together, culminating in her 1987 self-titled debut album. But it was with the release of second LP Watermark the following year that she entered the stratosphere.
Featuring her best-known track, Orinoco Flow (Sail Away), it shifted 11million copies worldwide.
Since then the trio have worked closely on a string of albums which have quietly sold by the bucketload.
She has won four Grammys and got an Oscar nod, for her work on the Lord Of The Rings soundtrack.
Even though Enya no longer lives with the Ryans, her castle is only a few minutes from their home.
Yet classically tinged music sung in made-up languages is hardly a standard recipe for chart glory.
One source told us: “Nobody at the record company thought she’d ever be this big. And it’s almost impossible for anyone to become so huge without touring or promotion, let alone singing ethereal tunes in a weirdo language.”
READ MORE:
Myleene Klass stands up for single mums: ‘I’m like a cockroach, you’ll never destroy
me’
Sam Smith dating ex-Hollyoaks star Andy Newton Lee after split with model Jay Camilleri
Kylie Minogue turns back time as she goes back to the ‘80s by reviving her corkscrew curls
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 — although she did appear at the Royal Variety Performance in 1997 — music insiders suspect she is simply unwilling to disrupt her reclusive lifestyle.
Even when she was spotted in public in 2007 and 2011, she was, naturally, by herself, Christmas shopping in Dublin.
Instead she remains in the castle she bought for £2.5millon in 1997. She has only her cats and a few staff for company.
A local told The Sun: “When she bought the castle there was a lot of work done and plenty of money put into security — cameras, gates and lights.
“People come looking for it from all over the world but you can’t see through the gates. You wouldn’t even know there was anyone there most of the time.”
Despite mending relationships with her family after leaving Clannad and spending time with her many nieces and nephews, other relatives barely see her.
Her uncle Noel Duggan said: “We don’t see much of her. She lives like a queen. She is a recluse.”
The pal who said she wasn’t the person you would want to go for a pint with also admitted she comes across as “serious and precious”.
An industry source said: “Throughout the music business there’s no one else who is so successful about whom so little is known. She doesn’t socialise, she’s barely seen out of the house, there aren’t any clues in her lyrics about her life.
“Even at her album launches, label bosses will hold a large event rather than ask her to do individual interviews, as they make her so uncomfortable.
“She’s a huge question mark. With the exception of the Ryans, even people who have worked with her for years know nothing about her.”
Enya has previously admitted: “My private lifestyle bothers a lot of people. I don’t like anybody else’s opinion. It’s not a hanging offence not wanting to go to nightclubs. What happened to choice?”
Romance is about as high on Enya’s to-do list as going out, describing music as her “first love and my present love”.
She once said: “After a bad day in the studio I’m dark and difficult to be
with, I want and need to be on my own. What sort of man would be able to adapt?
“Falling madly in love and getting married would be the most horrific thing
that could happen. My affairs are with melody and words and beautiful sounds.
“I had partners. But I find long relationships, well, how can I say it without appearing strange?
“I’m too much devoted to my music. Some people think it sounds sad but believe me, I’m happy. I am my music.”
She has been the subject of fans’ warped, misguided adoration.
In 2005 one broke into her castle and tied up a maid while searching for Enya, who had hidden in a panic room.
But the incident that intensified her isolation happened in 1996, when an
Italian stalker trailed her for more than a year, turned up at her parents’ pub with a picture of her around his neck and stabbed himself when he was chucked out. She now rarely meets fans at CD signings.
Despite being a loner, even Enya has her guilty pleasures, once admitting:
“I’m a big fan of Strictly. I don’t know if I could do the show, although I would adore to learn the Argentine tango.”