It's a weird album, filled with world beats played out on synthesizers with Enya's crisp enunciation giving it a nearly choral feel. While Watermark has its roots in traditional Irish music with Celtic rhythms and melodies that flow as easily as a Riverdance routine, its music truly doesn't fit into any established genre. The sixteen tracks on Enya's self-titled debut album show the group working towards the lush, fluid, sonorous sound that they perfected on their follow-up, Watermark. Roma writes lyrics, occasionally in fictional languages, and Nicky crafts Enya's ethereal sound by layering vocal tracks on top of each other and then drenching Enya's synthesized melodies, piano ballads and percussion in the lush vocals. The trio - fans call them Aigle, after the Ryans' music company, or Team Enya - has been working together ever since. It was there that she she met producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist and poet Roma Ryan. When Watermark was released in 1988, rock critic Robert Christgau gave the album a D+, saying that the album "makes hay of pop's old reliable women-are-angels scam." It's a fair assessment, but he says that like it's a bad thing - when in fact, it's why the album should be included in a canon of the greatest albums made by women.Įnya, born Eithne Ni Bhraonain, started her career in her Irish family's band, Clannad, in the 1980s.
In an occurrence that could have ended the career of a less confident artist, her follow-up, Watermark, was critically panned. It's an impressive feat made even more impressive by the fact that her self-titled debut album was scarcely remarked upon by the global press. And in the past 16 years, Enya has spent 283 weeks - about five and a half years - in the No. Her fans kept her 1991 album Shepherd Moons on the Billboard 200 chart for 238 weeks. She doesn't tour, doesn't show up on red carpets and seems to enjoy being in public only slightly more than someone in the Witness Protection Program.ĭespite her lack of interest in the trappings of fame (save for the castle she bought herself), Enya truly is famous. Įnya prefers to spend her days far from the limelight, creating her soft spun compositions secluded from the world in a private studio in a quiet Irish town.
Sail away enya album series#
The popularity of Enya music can be measured by the fact that her albums sell millions of copies worldwide irrespective of the fact that she does not give any live performances at stage shows.This essay is one in a series celebrating deserving artists or albums not included on NPR Music's list of 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women. Living in Dublin, Enya remains an extremely private person despite her fame. It is with a lot of quivering anticipation that her fans wait for her subsequent music albums. A singer who has never performed in a live concert, Enya hesitates to categorize her music into any generic classification.Įach of these albums has left an indelible impression on her fans.
The distinctive quality of Enya music can perhaps be accredited to the fact that it draws a great deal from Irish and Welsh music traditions. Such association of Enya music to violence has dismayed several of her fans. Her other song, “May it be”, a great example of Enya music which has no connections with any war was also used for reports on violence in Afghanistan. Her song “Only Time” from A Day without Rain was used as a background track by a number of television and radio stations while reporting the 9/11 attacks. Enya received her fourth Grammy Award in the year 2007 for her music for her album Amarantine. Her first major commercial success though, came with A Day without Rain, an album that won her a Grammy Award in the year 2000. Her inclination towards music was perhaps inevitable, as she belongs to a family of musicians and singers.Įnya, who started off her solo career with the infamous musician and actor Prince and his wife, later recorded the soundtrack for The Frog Prince, a 1984 movie. Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin, now known to the world as Enya Brennan, a four-time winner of the prestigious Grammy Award, was also nominated for the Academy Award as a songwriter. “Orinoco Flow”, recognized by some as “Sail Away”, was the first song in 1988 that put the Irish singing sensation Enya and Enya music into limelight and gave it international fame.