Women Pianists

"Feist comes from an indie-rock world, where it's sacrilege to admit any kind of ambition. But I had 100 percent in my mind the idea that we should have as much material as possible that could be played on the radio or resonate with a huge bunch of people. We already have the built-in reflex not to get behind anything that's going to be hollow. And when you have an artist with this kind of credibility, the idea is to communicate to as many people as possible without doing something ridiculous."

"Apple has really done its job. I thought it was a cute but harmless song (I first heard the song when she performed it on Letterman this past summer, and thought the chorus part was fun. That was about it). But now? I'm at the point where I'm thinking, "the next time I'm on iTunes I should download that song." And there's a reason for that. If I don't hear the entire song, the thirty-second snippet Apple gave us in the ad will rattle around in my cranium for months. So it's either download the song or go out and yell at the college kid who's going to serve me my latte tomorrow morning. You can see that I have no choice."

""Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" is inspired by old blues, Nashville psycho hillbillies & hazy memories. It tells the story of finding yourself lost on your path, and a choice has to be made. It's about gambling, fate, listening to your heart, and having the strength to fight the darkness that's always willing to carry you off."

"I'm not exactly sure what has driven me so hard... I've never questioned it. I've never had a back-up plan. I was never going to do anything else."

"It was blazing sunshine and I went on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the best gig, really emotional. I've had emails from people saying that they cried. They promised it wasn't the drugs."

"On the whole, I'm a positive, skippity-la-la person but I love the dark side of music and I will always want to explore that. It's a positive-sounding album but there's stuff underneath for sure."

"I managed to win Battle Of The Bands with one mandolin player! It was me and eleven goth bands and I won."

"I was really into sci-fi books as a kid. My dad is a physicist and he used to take my brothers and I into his lab when we were little. We played games with liquid nitrogen and Van de Graaff generators. He had the keys to the observatory at St Andrew's University and he'd get us up in the middle of the night to show us Halley's Comet. That's partly why the album is called Eye To The Telescope."

"My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories... They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record."

"I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild."

"Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see) This is what I wanna be Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see) Why the hell it means so much to me."

"Her face is a map of the world Is a map of the world You can see she's a beautiful girl She's a beautiful girl. And everything around her is a silver pool of light The people who surround her feel the benefit of it — It makes you calm She holds you captivated in her palm."

"When you're on your own I'll send you a sign Just so you know I am me, the universe and you."

"I can feel everything you do Hear everything you say Even when you're miles away Coz I am me, the universe and you."

"Well my heart knows me better than i know myself So I'm gonna let it do all the talking."

"Can you help me Can you let me go And can you still love me When you can't see me anymore? The fire fades away."

"Over the sea and far away She's waiting like an iceberg Waiting to change But she's cold inside She wants to be like the water. All the muscles tighten in her face Buries her soul in one embrace They're one and the same Just like water. Then the fire fades away And most of everyday Is full of tired excuses But it's too hard to say I wish it were simple But we give up easily You're close enough to see that You're the other side of the world to me."

"Many good things come from the left! [at the House of Blues on August 12th, 2008, while instructing the crowd to do a 'side-wave.']"

"I had that Paul McKenna come up to me once and he said, 'I love that song of yours about bicycles.' So I said to McKenna, 'And I loved the stunt you did in that glass box above the Thames.'"

"It's lovely to get to say hello to people you've always admired from afar, but the fun really starts out front with people going commando whilst wearing daring mud suits."

"I was traveling in Greece as a teenager, and for those who haven't been to Greece, it's absolutely covered in olive groves — stunted, gnarly little bonsai-type trees. And I was driving on a moped and a huge black stallion had pulled away from its stake and was just going nuts in this tiny, tiny, hobbit-like forest. It was just such a powerful image, this enormous beast let loose and going wild in a fairy-tale wood of tiny trees... The song itself is really about going through the process of making the first album. It was a very strange experience and a very steep learning curve. For the previous 10 or 15 years, I'd been completely my own boss — when you play a gig, you just play your new song, the new song is always your favorite. And here I was having to make an album of stuff that's never gonna go away. I was being asked to make these huge decisions, so really the song is just about learning to listen to your guts again. There's actually very few times in our lives now when we have to do that."

"Growing up in such a stunning landscape is inevitably going to have an effect on you, whether you rebel or whether you embrace, because it's so striking. I lived on this rugged, rugged coastline with the North Sea hammering at the cliffs, and the weather changes literally every half hour. My parents met as rock climbers, so they're absolute outdoors fiends, and we were constantly up hills and under canvas and camping and tramping around. They're very fond memories and something I still love to do."

"I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band — individuals, not session musicians."

"Enya knew nothing about recording, about production or arrangements. Originally, we were stock-piling music and just letting her get on with it. There was no name on the music she was writing. All I knew was that hard work succeeded."

"I heard the soundtrack to The Celts TV programme, which Enya had done, and I thought "what's this magical music?", and it was such an antidote to the, sort of, the day's work, that every night I went home and played the soundtrack from The Celts. And then I met her in Ireland and she was telling me how she was signing to another record company, I went "no, no, no, no, you can't do this, you must sign with us." And I did it really just as a self-indulgence, that I thought this was beautiful music and wanted to be associated with it, there wasn't really a kind of commercial edge to it at all."

"Sometimes the company is there to make money, sometimes it's there to make music. Enya was the latter. I would have been a genius if I knew this was going to sell millions of records. I just wanted to be involved with this music."

"Enya and her team record and we stay in touch until there is something for me to listen to. I then provide an outside view. She is a genius in the studio, comparable to somebody like Brian Wilson, but she and Nicky can be their own worst enemies at striving for personal best all the time. I guess that's the price of perfectionism."

"There's something about Celtic mythology which is deep in the soul, and I just think that somehow she has tapped right into it."

"I think they find it — they find me quite confusing, because — they know the music, but they don't know anything about me ... because I keep a very private lifestyle so they end up ... making up stories as such. But I don't really concern myself too much about them."

"Playing in a family band has many advantages, but it can often mean that when the going gets tough you take it out on each other with a liberty that only family can tolerate. I suppose it had always been difficult for Eithne. We loved what she brought to the band, but I know it was hard for her to infiltrate our years as a tightly knit nucleus. Musically, Ciaran and Pol had always been the creative force, and Noel, Padraig and myself had then worked our own expression around them. It was a good formula that worked well. Inevitably, when Eithne joined us full time, she found it hard. She hadn't been part of the original song-collecting days and consequently didn't share our enthusiasm for the old songs. I suppose she always felt little more than a "guest musician". As sisters we had always been close and talked about everything together, so I was sorry when band business caused a strain between us. One day, just after the tour, Eithne announced that she had decided to leave Clannad. She was going to pursue a solo career with Nicky Ryan as her manager. In the long term it turned out to be a good decision. I missed her, but I'm sure the apprenticeship with Clannad helped Eithne develop her own sound and afforded her strong contacts in the music business. She is talented and ambitious and, in the years that followed, the family was delighted to watch the success that came her way."

"Over the years I have learnt to be on my guard but, as any artist will testify, you are completely powerless if a writer has a certain agenda. There have been many damaging articles that have hurt my family deeply stories about our relationships, particularly between myself and Enya. We resolved in the early days not to talk about our private lives but, especially in Enya's case, this has often led to more intrigue and false speculation. For an artist, it is the unfortunate consequence of being in the public eye, but what makes me really angry is the way the family inevitably bears the suffering."

"Eithne had been working on her album and the single, 'Orinoco Flow', was released while we were in the studio. We were so excited for her. It was already at number eleven in the charts and we felt sure it was going to go up. We'd watched her on Top of the Pops the week before, so come Sunday evening we expectantly gathered in the house near the studio to listen to the Top Forty. Our youngest brother, Bartley, was working in London and he came over to be with us to hear the news. Number one! We were all shouting and screaming and hugging each other and you couldn't have heard the record playing above the din in the room. First we spoke to Eithne on the phone. More squealing. She was so happy and we knew that sharing the moment with us, even over the telephone, was very special. Then we rang our brother Leon who was over in Donegal. He'd been driving Mammy to church and they'd been frantically trying to get the radio station on the car radio so they could hear the result. The whole family were over the moon. That evening at dinner we had a bottle of champagne and toasted Eithne's success."

"On Christmas Day the traditional Brennan Christmas continued in full swing. It was wonderful that we could all be at home together. The girls set about preparing the meal while the boys rearranged the furniture so we could all sit around the table together. Eithne had just got a video camera and was skulking from room to room trying to catch everyone at their most embarrassing. It didn't take much to get us to act accordingly and the house was full of laughter and song."

"You tend to behave yourself in her company. Make even a small joke about her songs and she gets angry. And she does have a peculiar effect on men. I've watched normally sane journalists waxing metaphysical when they meet her."

"On the project The Celts I was asked to ... to write a song. And, at the time I was ... arranging with Nicky, and writing the music and performing ... so, no desire whatsoever to write lyrics!... But Roma was actually writing poetry at the time, and she was involved, with listening in the studio ... being the audience in the studio ... so she was involved with the project. So, it was very obvious that she would write the lyrics."

"There is no set sort of rules, or no set sort of formula to the way we work in the studio ... so it's difficult to know ... what we'll move on to next. We don't like to say, "Never, no we'd never do this" ... But, we ... like the setup as far as there's only three people in the studio ... because the work is very personal, very intimate, very emotional ... and that is very important to the album."

"I get very inspired by traveling, by being home in Donegal ... all those wonderful moments I'll take with me to the studio. And they, ah, then become at some stage, a melody. That emotion that I loved at some stage will evolve as a melody."

"For me, I've derived from religion ... what... I enjoy ... and it's to go to church, but usually ... when there's nobody else there. I just love that moment, ah, to just sit there. It's very peaceful, very calm, and very therapeutic, and it's ... wonderful."

"A lot of people tend to think that because I need all this time on my own in the studio, that I need time on my own, period. And that's not really true."

"I like to stay up-to-date with what's happening musically ... I wish people wouldn't think that such things were going to shock me. 'Wow! Does Enya really watch TV?'"

"Regardless of how I live my life, there are people who develop fixations that are not healthy. It could be a visual thing, or it could be the music that they are drawn to. These people need help."

"I do promotion when it is necessary ... But I always want to get back to the music. The personal appearances and red carpet events are very glitzy, but it's a bit false."

"I'm not one for walking the beaches humming a melody ... I love the discipline of sitting in the studio, writing and listening. That is my domain."

"They are as much "Enya" as I am."

"There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey. The first note has to lift you and make you go, 'What's this?' You play C, but why is it that one day it leads to G and it didn't yesterday? I don't know. It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting."

"I suppose there's a certain way I like the music to be performed, and I feel I can capture it better than anyone else. I know every note in every song, the whole history of it, even parts that were there and are gone."

"The word workaholic is so severe, but I do focus a lot on my work ... I think a lot about what I'm doing in all aspects of my life, what am I trying to achieve here, am I happy with this? Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing. ... You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result."

"Many childless single woman would be at my age already in panic. Also I have been thinking for the last 3 years, why I have been sacrificing so much time for my work. But, I have ended up to a thought that I would never change a single day out of my life. It would be lovely to get a family one day, but my life doesn't end even if that would not happen."

"I and Nicky have got a lot of disagreements, but they are nearly always associated to music. Because we both are very strong-willing persons, we might sit in the opposite corners in the studio argueing about things. One does never know beforehand, whose idea works the best way."

"Amarantine is an ancient word, which means eternity. The poets describe an undying flower with that word, and I fell in love with that idea ... For me that word suited rhythmically to the refrain of the piece. A-ma-ran-ti-ne. In our website the fans tried to guess something super-romantic to be the album's name, but this word was obviously never guessed by anyone."