How to Succeed in (Music) Business Without Really Touring

Like crossword puzzles? Try this pop music clue: Four letters. Female artist who debuted in the 1980s with distinctive sound, often ethereal and exotic. Famously reclusive. Has sold millions of albums but ignores music industry convention.

Even if you feel confident, we suggest you use a pencil--there are two answers.

Sade and Enya, two enigmatic stars with very different music but similar career paths, returned in November to the U.S. album charts after an absence of more than five years. Sade’s “Lovers Rock” surprised many industry observers by debuting at No. 3 on the U.S. chart in November and has now sold 2.4 million copies. Enya’s “A Day Without Rain,” despite no meaningful radio airplay, has topped 1.2 million copies.

Sade has now sold 18 million albums in the U.S., while Enya has sold more than 13 million (she is the second-best-selling Irish act ever, trailing only U2). The quick starts for each of their new discs suggest they may be their biggest sellers yet, adding powerful new chapters to the two singers’ unusual success stories.

Both do promotional events and media interviews only grudgingly, and because they enjoyed early success, they’ve had the luxury of being able to avoid the intense touring most artists need to reach a major audience. As a result, their public personas are largely shaped by their voices and videos. Their music styles are often described as timeless in sound and seemingly immune to pop trends.

“Sade defies convention, certainly, and each album seems to do better than the one before,” said Roger Davies, manager for Sade as well as Janet Jackson and Tina Turner. “And it’s almost like the longer Sade’s away, the bigger she gets, the more hunger there is. . . . It has incredible word of mouth. We don’t do a lot of press. We do a few TV shows. And it’s tough to get her to tour. She says she doesn’t want to be overexposed, and I laugh and tell her that’s the absolute least of her concerns.”

So it’s newsworthy that both of these J.D. Salingers of the diva set are now contemplating--however tentatively--concert tours.

“They’ve been trying to pin me down on it,” Sade said, referring to her record label, Epic Records. “I’ve never looked at it like we have to tour or should tour. It’s about songs.”

Sade last toured six years ago. Enya has never toured since launching her solo career and reaching global success with the shimmering 1988 song “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away).” Visiting Los Angeles recently to sing on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno”--her first U.S. television performance--the Irish singer said she is now mulling over a tour with an orchestra.

Enya, though, is a bit skeptical of the jet-set life and is pained by the promotional aspects of her career. Sitting with hands folded on a couch in a Beverly Hills hotel, she surveyed her surroundings with a blank expression. “It can get a little bit false, the lifestyle,” she said. “You’re in L.A. and New York, you’re in Tokyo and Sydney. You’re in hotels and limos. You’re going from interview to interview and it’s all sort of false. . . . And there’s no inspiration for melodies.”

Music is the common passion of these two women. But their musical creations and heritage are markedly different. Born Helen Folasade Adu in Nigeria and raised in England, Sade grew up admiring Curtis Mayfield and Al Green, and she draws on Afro-Caribbean sounds for her burnished torch songs and spare R&B; grooves. The 42-year-old artist performed on stage for the first time at age 22.

“I grew up a music lover, but not a singer,” she says. “There’s one part of me that wants to go out there and sing because I’ve got to the point where I actually do love standing up there and performing, and it’s taken me a long time to get to that point. I can express it now without being afraid. And I know people want to see it.”

But as a mother with a 4-year-old daughter, Sade is apprehensive about the rigors of touring. And that life doesn’t compare to the work of recording. “I love being in the studio more than anything,” she said. “I could spend my whole life in the studio and not going on the road or doing TV stuff or any of that. All of that doesn’t feel right to me. The studio always feels right.”

The classically trained Enya was born Eithne Ni Bhraonain in County Donegal and grew up touring with Clannad, the seminal Irish folk group, but wanted to use other styles as a solo artist. She often sings in Gaelic or Latin, and her layered, New Age-minded music is like the oft-remodeled castle she is now restoring, a mix of classical European themes in design but all firmly planted on Irish ground. “There’s always a melancholy, and that’s the Irish in it,” said Enya, 39.

Asked to describe the defining trait of her music-making life, she offered a coy smile. “I’m very slow.” That’s another reason she has avoided touring. “The record company wanted me back in the studio after each one to get working on the next.”

Enya’s latest album, her first since 1995, was assembled meticulously, like a master clockmaker’s handiwork. She and her producer, Nicky Ryan, began each track with one of Enya’s melodies and then built layers and layers of dreamscape vocals and instrumentation.

“Our golden rule: ‘If it doesn’t work, just erase it immediately,’ ” Enya said. “We don’t sit and analyze or try to salvage. It’s best to go back to the beginning, to the melody. So for some songs we may have recorded hundreds of vocals.”

A different energy is at work in Sade’s new album, her first in eight years, which has a jazz-minded spontaneity. “There were times where we tried to replace performances and it didn’t work,” she said. “It became a compromise of the original moment and the feelings that came from that moment. And that colored the way we progressed. Rather than be self-conscious, it’s more important to keep the atmosphere.”

Sade rarely returns to past recordings, while Enya flips back through songs like photo albums, often revisiting tracks such as her breakthrough hit.

“It’s very important to me. I listened to ‘Orinoco Flow’ today. It’s exciting to hear it. It introduced me worldwide, and I can never forget it. I listen to each song and I see the life span of that song, it’s like a little story.”

Stories are funny things--tales told by different authors in different styles and even languages can resonate on shared levels. Maybe that’s why Enya is a fan of Sade’s success story and its familiar rhythms.

“She’s having a really great comeback. Her fans waited for her. And isn’t that a wonderful thing?”