Singer Enya spotted in public for the first time in EIGHT years as reclusive star makes rare trip outside £98m castle
The Irish vocalist spends much of her time hunkered down in her vast Victorian castle near Dublin, with U2 lead vocalist Bono, 65, as her next door neighbour.
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Yet a new snap has seen the 64-year-old Caribbean Blue hitmaker stepping out from her stunning £98million compound, which she bought in 1997, for a night out.
The vocalist could be seen smiling as she posed for a picture with a bunch of others.
She could be seen donning a black lace top and flowing yellow skirt, accessorising with a silver bracelet.
The chart star, famed for tracks including Orinoco Flow and Only Time, styled her brunette hair poker straight with a wispy fringe.
She kept her make-up fresh as she attended a wedding at Drumhalla House in Donegal on May 16.
Fans were quick to gush over the fresh snap on Reddit, which marked her last public appearance since the Grammy's in 2017.
One wrote: "Glad to see them and Enya doing well."
A second posted: "Omg, I'm so happy to see her finally," as a third put: "Good to see our Enya."
One loyal fan then added: "I recognise her outfit from this 2016 performance of Orinoco Flow in Japan edit: and Enya's live US performance of Echoes in Rain — re-worn very stylishly."
Another mused: "She looks so lovely here, but girl drop the mixtape already omg it's been 10 years."
One simply put: "She looks stunning."
GOING SOLO
Enya's isolated life with her cats has been well-documented.
We previously reported how she also 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.
ENYA'S HISTORY
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.
The single star previously spoke of her isolated life, music success and juggling love and said: "I am single, yes.
"But as the song suggests, there have been… relationships. It's quite hard to have someone accept that – well, not that they are second to the music, but that I do need a certain amount of space for it."
She added to the Independent: "And even though the person will understand that at the beginning, there is something like jealousy towards the music after a while.
"It's difficult."
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