Who Can Say Where The Road Goes? 10 Enya Facts You Need To Know

5: Enya rarely performs live, and never tours in the traditional sense

Enya has frequently expressed how difficult it is to recreate her intricate, studio-oriented sound onstage, but she is also naturally reclusive and well-known for her Nick Drake-esque aversion to live performance. She does, however, join her family for their annual midnight Mass choral performance in County Donegal, in which she participates each year, and stages other carefully selected live performances. For example, she promoted her 2015 album, Dark Sky Island, with a worldwide media tour largely made up of TV appearances.

6: She lives in a castle

In 1997, Enya bought a Victorian Grade A listed castellated mansion in Killiney, County Dublin, from which she can see the sea. Formerly known as Victoria Castle and Ayesha Castle, the singer renamed it Manderley Castle after the house in Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel, Rebecca. “It’s very inspiring to me,” the singer has said. “I just look at the view, and if it’s overcast and raining, no matter: I never tire of it.”

7: She has sung in at least ten different languages

Some artists are bilingual and have recorded versions of their hits in one or two different languages, but they’re lightweights compared to Enya. Though she sings primarily in English, Latin and Irish, Enya has also recorded tracks in Japanese, Spanish, French, Welsh and even Loxian, a language invented by her co-writer Roma Ryan, wife of producer Nicky Ryan. Additionally, for the soundtrack to 2001’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, Enya sang the Golden Globe-winning May It Be in both English and Tolkien’s fictional language Quenya, and recorded Aníron in another of Tolkien’s fictional languages, Sindarin.

8: Her signature hit, Orinoco Flow, wasn’t initially going to be a single

The final track written for Enya’s breakthrough second album, 1988’s Watermark, Orinoco Flow wasn’t composed with the charts in mind at all. However, after Warner Bros’ Rob Dickins jokingly asked the singer to produce a single (knowing full well she wasn’t about radio hits), Enya and her co-writers, Nicky and Roma Ryan, pushed Orinoco Flow forward. The song became an international Top 10 hit, went to No.1 in the UK for three weeks and effectively turned Enya into an international star.

9: A minor planet has been named in her honour

In 1991, a minor planet from the asteroid belt previously known as 1978 WC was renamed 6433 Enya. Approximately seven kilometres (4.3 miles) in diameter, 6433 Enya was first discovered on 18 November 1978, by Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos at the Kleť Observatory in the Czech Republic; the planet orbits the Sun in the inner asteroid belt once every three years and eight months. In the overall scheme of things, Enya is one of relatively few people to have a planet named after them, and she sits among an elite cadre of musicians such as The Beatles, David Bowie, Brian Eno and Motörhead’s Lemmy, upon whom similar honours have been bestowed.

10: She has received not one, but two honorary doctorates

Having won Grammys, Billboard Awards, an Ivor Novello and even a Golden Globe, Enya has collected a well-deserved string of music-industry awards. However, she has also received two honorary doctorates, both of which came in 2007. She received the first from Galway’s National Union Of Ireland in June of that year, and the second from the University Of Ulster a month later. Both awards recognise Enya’s services to music and the creative industries, and the singer received the second one on the same day as novelist Martin Amis was honoured by the same faculty.

Now you’ve learned these ten Enya facts, check out our twenty best Enya songs of all time.