In September 1988, Enya released her second studio album Watermark. It was reissued in 19 the latter was a Japanese release with bonus tracks. In 1993, the album won Enya a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, the first of four she has won in her career. As with Watermark, Enya supported the album with a worldwide promotional tour that included several interviews and televised performances. Between 19, Enya released four singles from Shepherd Moons: " Caribbean Blue", " How Can I Keep from Singing?", " Book of Days", which charted at number ten in the United Kingdom, and " Marble Halls".
The album was certified multi-platinum by the British Phonographic Industry and Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of 1.2 million and five million copies, respectively. It went to number one on the UK Albums Chart and peaked at number seventeen on the Billboard 200 in the United States. Shepherd Moons received generally positive reviews from critics and became a greater commercial success than Watermark. The album was recorded in Ireland and London and continued to display Enya's sound of multi-tracked vocals with keyboards and elements of Celtic and new-age music. At its conclusion, she wrote and rehearsed new material for her next album with her long time recording partners, manager, arranger and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. After the unexpected critical and commercial success of her previous album Watermark (1988), Enya embarked on a worldwide promotional tour to support it. Will I listen again?: Probably not, unless I take up Yoga.īest Track: Carribean Blue is the standout here, it captures the essence of the album perfectly.Shepherd Moons is the third studio album by Irish singer, songwriter and musician Enya, released on 4 November 1991 by WEA.
#Enya album shepherd moons series#
In this way Shepherd Moons has to be commended for doing something that literally no other album in this series could possibly do, even if there’s very little that would make me want to listen all over again. Enya could literally be singing about anything and I’d be reaching for my yoga mat. Standout single Caribbean Blue does its best to alleviate this with its waltz time signature, but yet again, it’s so much more about what the listener feels that what the song is about. Perhaps this is why Enya became so popular, it’s so difficult to describe the feeling this music gives you as no one can actually remember how any of it goes. It’s an album that creates this zen like state for the listener, the gentle lilt of the backing vocals on How Can I Keep Singing, or the electronic sounding ‘mmmm’s on Angeles are so relaxing, but are completely gone from the listener’s head once it’s finished. It’s funny that despite listening to the album at least 3 times before sitting down with individual tracks to write this, I literally couldn’t tell you how any of the songs go.
As an album Shepherd Moons is euphoric, but in a spiritual way, like it’s helping you reach inner peace. As a take on a traditional song, Marble Halls is probably the most straightforward melody here, but even here the voice emerges through the delicate strings. It’s the haunting quality of Enya’s voice that’s most instantly impressive, on Smaointe which closes the album her voice is genuinely beautiful, layers of it echoing across the new age synths. This was an artist who everyone was listening to, no matter if the idea of Irish folk songs with plenty of Uilleann pipes sounds like the best, or the worst thing possible. I was genuinely amazed to find a copy of Shepherd Moons, the follow up to her breakthrough album Watermark among my Mum’s music collection.
Literally no one could have anticipated that a ‘New Age’ Celtic singer from Ireland would not only become the most successful solo artist from the country, but one of the defining voices of the 90s. Enya is unlike anyone else in the commercial music world.
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