Watermark is the second studio album by Irish singer and composer Enya, released on 19 September 1988 by WEA. After the release of her previous album Enya (1987), she secured a recording contract with Warner following a chance meeting with chairman Rob Dickins, who had become a fan of her music. Her contract allowed her considerable artistic and creative freedom, with minimal interference from the label and no deadlines. Enya recorded Watermark in ten months with her long-time collaborators: manager, producer and arranger Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. It was initially recorded in Ireland in demo form before production relocated to London to re-record, mix, and master it digitally. Watermark features music in different styles, displaying Enya's sound of multi-tracked vocals with keyboards, percussion instruments, and elements of Celtic, ambient, and new-age music, though Enya believes her music does not belong in the latter genre.
Watermark initially received mixed reviews from critics and it became an unexpected commercial success, which propelled Enya to worldwide fame. It peaked at number 5 on the UK Albums Chart, number 25 on the Billboard 200 in the United States, and reached number 1 in New Zealand and Switzerland. It was certified quadruple Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 1.2 million and 4 million copies across the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively. To promote the album, Enya embarked on a worldwide promotional tour which included interviews, appearances, and live performances. Four singles were released from the album, beginning with the international hit "Orinoco Flow", which spent three weeks at number 1 in the United Kingdom. Watermark was reissued in 1989, 1991 and 2009; the first two contain "Storms in Africa (Part II)" as a bonus track; the latter was a Japanese release with a second bonus track titled "Morning Glory".
Background In March 1987, then 25-year-old Enya released her self-titled debut solo album Enya on BBC Records in the United Kingdom and on Atlantic Records in the United States. It was originally produced as the soundtrack to the BBC2 documentary series The Celts, with Enya and her recording partners of five years, manager, arranger and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. It was a mild commercial success, peaking at number 69 in the United Kingdom. Soon after its release Rob Dickins, then chairman of Warner Music UK, became a fan of the album, playing it "every night before I went to bed". Weeks later, he met Enya and the Ryans at a chance meeting at the year's Irish Recorded Music Association Awards in Dublin where Dickins learned Enya was considering signing with a rival label, prompting him to attract her to Warner. After a period of negotiations, Dickins signed Enya, granting her wish for complete artistic freedom without interference from management or deadlines to have albums finished. Dickins later said, "Sometimes you sign an act to make money, and sometimes you sign an act to make music. This was clearly the latter ... I just wanted to be involved with this music." In the process, Enya departed from Atlantic and signed to the Warner-led Geffen Records to handle distribution in North America.
Recording
With the green-light to make a new album, Enya recorded Watermark from June 1987 to April 1988. It was initially recorded in demo form at Aigle Studio, a 16-track facility located in the basement of the Ryans' home, then located in Artane, a northern suburb of Dublin. Nicky operated a Fostex E16 tape machine with KEF and Yamaha NS-10M speakers for monitoring, two Alesis MIDIverb II models, an ATC Q1 for reverb, and a Roland SDE-1000 Digital Delay for delay. He made a conscious effort not to incorporate audio compression as he wished to make the music sound satisfactory "at the recording end". Enya wrote and recorded the album without the use of a click track to retain a more natural feel to the music. Enya played a variety of keyboards and synthesisers, including the Yamaha KX88 master keyboard, Yamaha TX802, Oberheim Matrix-6R, Akai S900, Roland D-50, Roland Juno-60 and PPG Wave. The Juno-60 was a particular favourite of hers. Prior to recording the album, she had intended to replace its parts with better sounds but could not find better substitutes, so they were left in.
After a demo version of the album was put down, Dickins requested to have it re-recorded digitally at a more professional studio as the analogue equipment at Aigle had created an abundance of tape hiss, causing the music to suffer. Nicky found the quality of Enya's multi-track vocals had also diminished, leaving them the only option of re-recording them, though he later found the digital recording had lost "warmth in the bottom end". Recording took place at Orinoco Studios in Bermondsey, London and lasted for two months with Ross Cullum who carried out co-production, engineering, and mixing duties. "Storms in Africa" and "Orinoco Flow" were completed on the studio's two Mitsubishi 32-track recording machines. Away from the "intimate and personal" setting of their home studio, Enya found working in London more difficult as the busy city caused many distractions. Nicky said the studio was designed "in a completely mad way", which he and Enya found more attractive to work in. During the final stages of recording, Enya tripped on a step, which resulted in two cuts to her knee. She continued to work, "taking these heavy pain-killers, sitting at the desk, in the studio with one foot propped up on cushions." Cullum completed the majority of the album's mixing at Wessex Sound Studios; Jim Barton was the mixer on "Orinoco Flow".
Watermark firmly established Enya's sound of multi-layered vocals, keyboard-oriented songs, and influences of Celtic music. Enya felt the need to have layers of vocals to add a "human element" to her music as solely using keyboards and digital sampling sounded, to her, "a bit linear and straight". The idea of the multi-vocals originated when Enya was a member of Clannad, her family's Celtic band, in the early 1980s. With Nicky as their manager, influenced by The Beach Boys and the "wall of sound" technique made famous by producer Phil Spector, the two often discussed the idea of layering Enya's voice to make it its own instrument. After experimenting with the concept on Enya the vocals became more established on Watermark, with as many as over 200 vocal tracks were painstakingly recorded for certain sections. In one instance, around 90 tracks had been put down during a period of several days but the two felt they did not sound right, so they erased them and started over. This was the case particularly during the recording of "Miss Clare Remembers", a piano instrumental, when they experimented with the idea of adding vocals but decided against keeping them.
Songs
Watermark is formed of eleven tracks, eight of which Enya and Roma are listed on as co-writers. The remaining three are instrumentals solely composed by Enya. She had performed solos as a vocal on Enya, but wanted them played by different instruments on Watermark, and employed additional musicians to play parts that were already written: Neil Buckley plays the clarinet on "On Your Shore", Chris Hughes plays the rototoms on "River" and the rototoms and African hand drum on "Storms in Africa", and Davy Spillane contributes the low whistle and uilleann pipes on "Exile" and "Na Laetha Geal M'óige". Enya sings in Irish, her first language, and English and Latin. She looked back on the album in 2000: "Looking back ... the words are those of loss, of reflection, of exile – not necessarily from one's country, but from those whom the heart loves. It has in its theme searching, longing, of reaching out for an answer. The ocean is a central image. It is the symbolism of a great journey."
Side one Watermark opens with a same-titled track, a tradition that Enya would adopt on her next three albums. Its title derived from a poem Roma was writing at the time of recording, which inspired her to name the track accordingly. However, the track was kept as an instrumental and the poem was left unused. It was printed for the first time in the liner notes for Enya's 2002 box set, Only Time: The Collection. Enya and Nicky dedicated the track to Bones Howe, an American producer and a friend of Nicky's who was the inspiration behind the only word that Enya sings on the track: "Howe". During a meeting with Enya, Diana, Princess of Wales revealed that "Watermark" was a favourite of hers.
"Cursum Perficio" came about after Enya and the Ryans had seen a documentary on American actress and model Marilyn Monroe, who once wrote the phrase on the tiles on her front doorstep. It means "My journey ends here" or "I finish the course" in Latin, and Roma completed a set of Latin lyrics based around the phrase. Enya wanted her vocals to be "bold and up-front" like that of a choral piece, and realised early on that translating its lyrics into English or Irish would not complement the music, so Latin was used. Its original title was "Quo Plus".
"On Your Shore" refers to Magheragallon Beach at Enya's hometown of Gweedore, County Donegal that houses a cemetery where her grandparents are buried. Its emotional and personal connection to her childhood inspired her to write it. She explained, "When the first people lived in Gweedore, there was a sort of shelter for the fishermen ... The sea came in when there was a sermon going on and everybody was wiped out. There are a lot of stories like that, where we would start to talk about them and a song would evolve." It was written as an instrumental at first, but Enya and Nicky found lyrics suited the track better. Numerous "vocal experiments" were tried out for it, but neither suited the music, so it took the more simple form of a single lead vocal with one synthesiser. The clarinet solo was originally sung on its demo, but Nicky suggested a clarinet was the most suitable instrument that suited the vocals she used when singing it.
"Storms in Africa" originated from a melody that Enya had played on the Juno-60 after Nicky had preset with a sound using its arpeggiator function and asked her to develop something with it. He returned to the studio several hours later to find Enya had come up with the song's chord sequence, which inspired him to suggest the title. From then on, he helped to "guide its direction" and arrangement. They wanted the song to capture a feeling of unrest, to which Cullum suggested they bring in Hughes to play the rototoms and African hand drums. The track was named after it was recorded. Two versions were recorded with Irish and English lyrics; Roma recalled the Irish version became the favourite to which Enya and Nicky also agreed, which led to its addition on the album. The English version, titled "Storms in Africa (Part II)", became a B-side on the former's single in 1989 and a bonus track on some later pressings of Watermark.
In writing about "Exile" in 2002, Roma believed its theme of loneliness from the separation of one's love is also met with "hope and determination" that they will return. The song was originally recorded with wordless vocals, but Dickins thought it would work better with lyrics, in particular poetry by Wilfred Owen. Roma was familiar with some of Owen's works, and wrote a set of lyrics inspired by their style. Enya and Nicky wished to incorporate the shakuhachi, a Japanese flute, on the track but they could not find a player confident enough. Instead, as Nicky explained, they resorted to hiring "a gypsy guy to play the flute". The vocal version was released as a B-side to Enya's 1992 single "Book of Days", titled "As Baile".