ENYA: I find that being successful doesn’t make it any easier to write a melody, you know, that you have written so many albums doesn’t make it easy to go in. So I have to forget the success and the listeners what they are expecting. I have to leave all that aspect of the music outside of the studio, and to just really bring in where I will concentrate on the work. That is what is really important. That, there is no distractions, nothing to interfere with looking for one song at a time. It’s important to keep focus on it. Things like that where people say, “but you have written so many songs, ” It doesn’t mean that I will write more songs, you have to really, sometimes for me, it’s like a month and I say it to Nicky, “Oh my God, do I write another song?”, and “Yes, it’s gonna take longer but you will write another song.” So confident wise, you do get writer’s block. You know, that would happen. So it’s again to me, it’s very exciting moment, when I write the songs. So I get very excited. I think, yes, song, I wrote it. So it always feels new to me. It always feels like it is a new melody, but it holds a certain amount of fascination to myself as well. I might keep thinking what I am gonna do, and next day, I’ve written. It’s very difficult to analyze writing other songs. Quite difficult.

Q: You know the excitement, but you know also the writer’s block.

ENYA: Yes, maybe the last song I wrote that I ever write… But I get encouragement. I said from Nicky and from Roma. It takes as long as you want. It’s always like write whatever I want. It has to be natural progression as well for me that whatever that the strongest emotional feeling that I want to get across to the listeners, is what I am trying to capture in the song. So you might play a song you think but it’s not saying anything, you know, it doesn’t move me in any way, so in that regard, I put a lot of importance on the work that it’s not enough to just write melody, it has to have a depth to it. Something that is important to me that I can relate to, when I sing it, that I feel it very emotionally is very important to me.

AERA English | February 2009
Makiko Saito