From Peru to Cebu, feel the power of Babylon

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

13/11/88 : Watermark - Enya


Our second visit with Enya and last time I was pleasantly surprised by the substance within, so my expectations here are slightly higher than they would otherwise have been. It's also nice to see the women currently running at 3/7 of our visits this year.

Yeah, it's all pretty fey Oirish New World-y, but there's still more substance there than you feel there's any right to be. This is the album with "Orinoco Flow" on it which still sounds pretty fresh and different, despite it having been copied a million times over the years. Familiarity with the general sound is a bit of a problem here because you feel like you've heard plenty of the tracks too often over the years but I feel it would be harsh to blame 1988 Enya for that. It's not something I'd actively choose to listen to, but if you want some background, but not completely invisible, music then there are far worse things you could choose than this.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on her sixth week of a 54 week run, with it having peaked at #5 in its fourth week - but that was only the start of it because she managed another 45 weeks over nine runs over the next seven years. The top five this week were Kylie and compilations from Dire Straits, Wet Wet Wet (a new entry), The Human League and Cliff Richard (a new entry) with the next highest new entry being a Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music compilation (#6) - Xmas was on its way!

Wikipedia has loads on the album (281 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is her second album - apparently her record contract with Warner allowed her complete artistic freedom with no deadlines, so it's fair to say they took a bit of a punt on her, but I think it worked out OK for them. The rest of the entry is incredibly detailed about the thought processes behind each track and it's fair to say I didn't pay any attention to any of it, but I did check out her entry to make up for it and learned she's the best-selling solo artist from Ireland and the second best-selling artist after (unsurprisingly) U2 (who we'll be seeing pretty soon). Back to the album, the critics were mostly pretty positive about it apart from our old mate Robert Christgau who went off on one about it, declaring it a "must to avoid" and the "old reliable women-are-angels scam" - are you OK, Bob? Commercially, it did OK I guess, getting to #1 in New Zealand (they love this sort of thing down there) and Switzerland - it only got to #25 in the US but like here, it seems to have sold well over the years, shifting 4 million copies there over the years and ELEVEN MILLION copies globally!!

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a copy for a quid (there are lots of them out there!) but you can shell out £114.71 on a 180 gram vinyl copy or, as a curiosity, £199 on a MiniDisc copy - I used to love my MiniDisc player, but I (wisely) never bought an album in that format. And there was never any chance of me buying this because it's just not something I need in my life, but I have to admit I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to.

06/11/88 - An enjoyable helluva mess
20/11/88 - The mystery stays unsolved

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