She lives in a castle

I promised myself when I started writing this blog that I would not allow it to turn into a 'music blog' where I hopelessly try to keep up with what's cool at the moment and post mp3s and be hip and blog hype upcoming new artists and revert to the same stock phrases because I don't actually know anything about music. I am incredibly unmusical and cannot play an instrument or sing very well, and I know almost nothing in terms of musical theory. Consequently, music is this magical thing that I don't understand and can't describe, but I want to hold it and squeeze it and kiss it and listen to it all the time.

Part of the fun for me is when you hear something new and it's different to stuff you've heard before, so this often means I'm listening to some slightly unusual stuff. And something that one of my friends says to me all the time is 'Where do you find this stuff?' The answer, Charlie, is of course the internet. The internet provides. And sometimes it is from some blogger recommending something, sometimes it is when you're following one musician on a social media thing and they recommend something, and sometimes one of your friends suggests something. But sometimes you procrastinate your way onto listening to something via a sort of internet scenic route and can't remember how you got there.

Which brings me on to my latest find. For some reason I found myself browsing through Wikipedia's List of best-selling music artists last night, and it is pretty fascinating. I never thought I had a particularly good encyclopaedic knowledge in this field, but it's still sort of surprising when there's some country singer you've never heard of and they've sold 54 million albums. Well done Anne Murray. But no, it was not Anne Murray who sparked my interest. It was Enya.

Like I said, this will not be a music blog where I try to keep up with what's cool. Obviously I've heard of Enya, but have never (ever) chosen to listen to her stuff. But what a fool I have been. There were several reasons I decided to give it a go. First, according to her wiki page, the woman lives in a castle. This is definitely something that should be applauded. Especially considering the fact that she's had to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on security just to keep stalkers out. She's also got a comet named after her.

What really attracted me to giving it a go though was how ridiculously uncool Enya as a sort of lifestyle brand is. I like surprising myself, and if it's with ridiculous hippydippy new age music, then so be it. It's basically like if Kate Bush never sang about sex, and just sang about mother earth and being a good catholic. Probably - I've not actually paid too much attention to the lyrics but to be fair this partly because a lot of the songs are written in Irish, Latin or made-up languages such as Quenya, Sindarin and Loxian. She's a massive geek. And how I love it.

Listening to this music takes me back to about a year ago when I visited Ireland with some friends, except in this image in my head I am alone and I'm dressed like something from Lord of the Rings and I'm standing on a cliff looking out to the Atlantic Ocean. It's raining of course, and waves crash on the shore. I'm thinking about something important, and I maintain a heroic stillness as the helicopter-mounted camera spins round me whilst zooming out in slow motion. Despite me seeing this in the third person and knowing that this sort of camera action could only be achieved with a helicopter, the helicopter becomes invisible when I imagine it from a first person point of view.

Anyway, it's fantastic. Spotify is the best thing ever, I've spent about four hours listening to this. And don't get me started on the videos. Look at this.