...this song. They were really pushing the boundaries of recording production technique when they created this one in the mid-'70s. The effort it took to create some of those vocal sounds ("multi-vocals", as Enya calls them) was truly astonishing, and the interesting thing is that even if you were to recreate this song today, there really aren't many shortcuts to achieving this sound. We have all kinds of keyboard and recording technologies that didn't exist in 1975, but if you really want the sound of hundreds of voices...well, you still have to overdub hundreds of voices! (Whether or not that is done in digital sampling synthesis or using multitrack recording is irrelevant). The main difference is that today it would be much easier to pull this one off live.
BTW, I'm still looking for a cover version that was made in the late '80s or early '90s, I think. Like many of the covers, they took shortcuts with the multi-vocals, which led to an overall weaker effect and a less impressive sound. However, as I recall, this particular cover did a really nice job interpreting the second bridge ( "ooh...you'll wait a long time for me" ). I wish I could find it on YouTube. Unfortunately, it's not the cover by "The Will to Power", nor is it any of the other contemporaneous versions (The Pretenders, Johnny Logan, et al.).
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