" Amarantine" is a love song, of which its title is a word that Enya said addresses the idea of everlasting and love. The album was Enya's first of her career not to include a song sung in Gaelic, her first language.
The album was dedicated to BBC producer Tony McAuley, who commissioned Enya to compose the soundtrack to the 1987 BBC documentary series The Celts which was subsequently released as her debut album, Enya (1987). Enya adopted a five-day working schedule to work on the album, working from 10 a.m. Recording took place at Aigle Studio, a facility installed at the Ryan's home in Killiney, County Dublin in Ireland. She worked with her longtime recording partners, producer and arranger Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. She resumed in September 2003 to start work on Amarantine, her first studio album since her commercially successful 2000 release, A Day Without Rain. Īfter the release of her box set Only Time – The Collection in November 2002, Enya took several months off from writing, recording, and releasing music. According to Nielsen SoundScan, it was the third top selling new age album of the 2000s in the United States.
In 2007, the album won Enya her fourth Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. To promote the album, Enya did several interviews and televised performances, including the 2006 World Music Awards. A Christmas Special Edition was released in 2006. Enya released two singles from the album, " Amarantine" and " It's in the Rain". 6 on the Billboard 200 in the United States, where it sold one million copies in its first month of release, and No. It is Enya's first album not to include a song in Irish and her first to include songs sung in Japanese and Loxian, a fictional language created by Roma.Īmarantine received mixed reviews from critics, but it was a commercial success and reached No. Amarantine was recorded in Ireland with her longtime recording partners, arranger and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. Following the release of her 2002 compilation box set Only Time – The Collection, Enya took a short break before she started work on a new album in September 2003, her first since A Day Without Rain (2000). "Wonder why this love is over, wonder why it's not forever," she sings.Amarantine is the sixth studio album by Irish singer-songwriter and musician Enya, released on 21 November 2005 by Warner Music. The track "Even in the Shadows", for one, is surely a lament to lost love. I do not spot the hip-hop influence, but she does perhaps express more naked emotion on this record than she has on predecessors. She points out that several songs here have a stronger beat, and even a little hip-hop influence. "Oh, but I always feel I am doing something completely different with each new album," she claims, telling me she is a fan of both Green Day and P Diddy, and influenced by both. It is aural bubble bath, serene and celestial. The material they create is music for cathedrals, for yoga sessions. Like everything she has ever done, it is instantaneously recognisable as the work of the three people that have always toiled to make Enya Enya: producer Nicky Ryan, his lyricist wife Roma, and the woman herself, who writes all the music, sings the songs, and publicly fronts the project. Her new album, Dark Sky Island, is her first in seven years. "I've been told I have a cross-generational appeal," she says, "and that people who used to like 'Orinoco Flow' are now playing my music to their children.