Ugly Thoughts On Pretty Enya
While Enya is one of my favorite musicians, on the rare occasions when I see what she looks like, I find myself surprised that she is so pretty. Why? Perhaps her handlers have done a great job of making an ordinary woman look extraordinary, but I don’t think so.
We should expect a weak correlation between beauty and musical ability in general due to assortative mating, and we should expect music labels and customers to select for musicians who excel on both criteria, producing a stronger correlation for professional musicians. And I think I do expect these things for the typical musician. But …
But I fear that I succumbed to the temptation to idealize my favorite musicians, e.g., expecting them to be primarily people with exceptional musical ability mainly motivated by their love of music. But of course there is little good reason to think better of the motivations of the best vs. the typical professional musician. And relative to the pool of talented musicians, I should expect successful professional musicians to be prettier, more charismatic, harder working, more desirous of fame, and more willing to accommodate the demands of today’s music industry. I should expect that there are people with even better musical ability out there than I never hear of, because they didn’t have as much of these other features. But to admit this makes it harder to idealize my favorite musicians.
I should also admit that if I have had some success as an academic, it is probably because I am some combination of prettier, more charismatic, harder working, more desirous of fame, or more willing to accommodate the demands of today’s academic industry. There are probably non-academics out there more able than I to generate interesting intellectual insights, but rating lower overall on these other criteria.
q,I understand your thoughts on this topic, and I think it's a good general picture about today's popular music. If we were talking about well-known celebrity female entertainers I would totally agree. However in the case of Enya, many of your statements are not true. The music is composed and arranged by herself, instruments, vocals by herself not by her producer, Nicky Ryan. Of course Nicky also has a huge part in the music (arrangement as well, musical ideas, etc.).The image is defined by Enya. She said in an interview that she chooses carefully the photographer, the video clip director, the clothing designers, etc. so that the resulting image would be exactly what she wants.Anyway the image in her case is secondary, there are very few interviews, very few advertisements, no tours, most people can see her only on the CD cover, and the reason they buy it is not due to her image but the music.Yes, she has natural beauty (that differs from today's beauty trends) but she benefited from this very very little. In her case it was a rare coincidence of musical talent, wonderful voice, new musical ideas and beauty.Anyway here is the "raw" Enya at 46:http://gallery.ulster.ac.uk...
Enya is, in fact, stunning. She has begun to show her age, certainly, in some of the recent photos, which I think is what some of the commenters are talking about. But Enya is 48 years old, and for that, she looks fantastic. She's been in the music business for over 20 years and the photos on the internet are from all different periods in her career. If you look at photos from her earlier albums (Watermark, Shepherd Moons, etc.) she is generally not airbrushed but still looks absolutely gorgeous.