Michael Cretu (Romanian: Mihai Crețu, pronounced [miˈhaj ˈkretsu]; born 18 May 1957) is a Romanian-German musician, singer, songwriter, composer, and record producer.
[3] Cretu scored an unexpected worldwide commercial hit with the debut Enigma album MCMXC a.D. (1990), helped by its lead single, "Sadeness (Part I)".
Cretu continues to produce Enigma albums and singles; the most recent is The Fall of a Rebel Angel (2016), its eighth overall.
[6][7] Around this time, Cretu wished to pursue a career in pop music after listening to "Golden Slumbers" on Abbey Road (1969) by The Beatles, calling the song "beautiful".
Their debut album Motivation (1985) contained the single "Cold Days, Hot Nights" which became a hit around Europe.
Several of the tracks on The Invisible Man were edited slightly and, therefore, had different lengths than the German-language versions on Die Chinesische Mauer.
His former house, near Sant Antoni de Portmany on the western coast of Ibiza, was a Moroccan-style mansion that was designed and built by Bernd Steber and Gunter Wagner in more than nine years.
[13][10] Cretu was encouraged to pursue a solo project by Oldfield, who was impressed by his studio production skills and musical ideas.
[6] The formation of Enigma involved Fabrice Cuitad, under the alias of David Fairstein, and Frank Peterson.
The trio worked together to create their groundbreaking debut single "Sadeness (Part I)", which became a surprise international hit.
[14] Cretu was not surprised by the album's unexpected success, as he recalled telling his wife before its release, "This will be a huge hit or nothing at all".
[16] Cretu purposefully reduced the use of Gregorian chants as numerous artists had started to use them in their music, causing "an avalanche of bad copies", but later regarded it as a compliment.
[8] Cretu was approached by Paramount Pictures to write the soundtrack of the film Sliver and he came up with another 1993 single "Carly's Song" after the main female character's name.
[18][19] In 1999 Cretu steered the project in another direction by using samples of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana for the fourth album The Screen Behind the Mirror, released in 2000.
Familiar sounds of the Shakuhachi flute, tribal or Gregorian chants were replaced with more commercially-friendly tunes and beat.
The Ibiza home was bulldozed after Cretu lost a legal battle in which he did not obtain planning permission to renovate and build on the site.