SONG OF THE DAY

“Boadicea” by Enya (Enya [self-titled album later re-released under the title The Celts], BBC/ Atlantic Records, 1987). Writ­ten by Eithne Patri­cia Ní Bhraonáin (a.k.a. Enya).

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- Enya’s first full-album record­ing, Enya / The Celts fea­tures music writ­ten and recorded for the sound­track of the 1986 doc­u­men­tary tele­vi­sion series, The Celts. The album con­tains only a por­tion of the music Enya com­posed for the TV series. In 1992, coin­cid­ing with the reis­sue of the album, a pre­vi­ously unre­leased track from these ses­sions, “Eclipse” was released as a b-side on the CD-single for “the Celts”. In 2005, another pre­vi­ously unre­leased track from the same ses­sions, a “Spaghetti West­ern Theme” done in the style of Hugo Mon­tene­gro, was released on the CD-single for “Ama­ran­tine”, in mem­ory of one of the pro­duc­ers of the TV series.

- Recorded in 1986, it was not released until 1987 when the series was first broadcast.

- The album was first released in the UK by the BBC on their own label, and later issued in North Amer­ica by Atlantic Records. In 1992, Warner Music reis­sued a remixed and slightly revised ver­sion of the album as The Celts.

– The song “Boadicea” was also on sound­track of the 1992 film Sleep­walk­ers.

- The Fugees sam­pled “Boadicea” for their song “Ready or Not” on 1996’s The Score. Enya had pre­pared to sue the group for copy­right infringe­ment because they had not asked for per­mis­sion and did not give her credit. After learn­ing that The Fugees were not gangsta rap­pers, Enya declined to fol­low through with the suit, but stick­ers were then placed on The Score giv­ing Enya credit for her work.

- Mario Winans also sam­pled “Boadicea” for the melody of the song “I Don’t Wanna Know”. Pro­duc­er P. Diddy report­edly per­son­ally con­tacted Enya for per­mis­sion and gave her 60% of the royalties. She also received name billing (“Mario Winans fea­tur­ing Enya and P. Diddy”) for the song, which turned out to be a hit, putting her name #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 2004. It is Enya’s high­est chart­ing sin­gle in the U.S..

- The song was also sam­pled on the answer-back song “You Should Really Know” by The Pirates fea­tur­ing Shola Ama, Naila Boss & Ishani which peaked at #8 on the UK Sin­gles Chart.

- “Boadicea” (with “Ready or Not”) was also sam­pled by Nina Sky for their hype sin­gle “Time To Go” fea­tur­ing Angie Mar­tinez, from the mix­tape pre­sented by Cipha Sounds.

- Boudica (pro­nounced /ˈbuːdɨkÉ™/), for­merly known as Boadicea (/boʊˌædɨˈsiːə/) (d. AD 60 or 61) was a queen of the Brit­tonic Iceni tribe of what is now known as East Anglia in Eng­land, who led an upris­ing of the tribes against the occu­py­ing forces of the Roman Empire. Boudica’s husband, Prasutagus, an Icen­ian king who had ruled as a nom­i­nally inde­pen­dent ally of Rome, left his king­dom jointly to his daugh­ters and the Roman Emperor in his will. How­ever, when he died his will was ignored. The king­dom was annexed as if con­quered, Boudica was flogged and her daugh­ters raped, and Roman financiers called in their loans. The his­tory of these events, as recorded by Tac­i­tus and Cas­sius Dio, was redis­cov­ered dur­ing the Renais­sance and led to a resur­gence of Boudica’s leg­endary fame dur­ing the Vic­to­rian era, when Queen Vic­to­ria was por­trayed as her “name­sake”. Boudica has since remained an impor­tant cul­tural sym­bol in the United King­dom. The absence of native British lit­er­a­ture dur­ing the early part of the first mil­len­nium means that Britain owes its knowl­edge of Boudica’s rebel­lion to the writ­ings of the Romans.

- Eithne Patri­cia Ní Bhraonáin (born 17 May 1961), bet­ter known as Enya, is an Irish vocalist, instrumentalist and composer.

- She began her musi­cal career in 1980, when she briefly joined her fam­ily band, Clan­nad, before leav­ing to pur­sue her solo career. She gained wider recog­ni­tion from her appear­ance in the 1986 BBC series The Celts. Shortly after­ward, her 1988 album Water­mark pro­pelled her to fur­ther inter­na­tional fame and she became known for her unique sound, char­ac­terised by voice-layering, folk melodies, syn­the­sised back­drops and ethe­real reverberations.

VIDEO OF THE DAY