Enya
Enya
Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin, known professionally as Enya, is an Irish singer-songwriter, musician, and producer. Born and raised in County Donegal, Ireland, Enya began her music career when she joined her family's Celtic band Clannad, in 1980. She left the group in 1982 to pursue a solo career with producer and arranger Nicky Ryan and his wife, poet and lyricist Roma Ryan, developing her distinct sound of multi-tracked vocals, keyboard instruments, and elements of New age, Celtic, classical, church, and...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionWorld Music Singer
Date of Birth17 May 1961
CityGweedore, Ireland
CountryIreland
It's very easy for me to keep a low profile because the focus I feel is always on the music. Success and fame are two different things. And so I feel the success is always towards the music, which means that I can have a very normal and private lifestyle.
Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.
The music sold itself before anybody knew who I was.
People tend to think that because I need all this time on my own in the studio, that I need time on my own, period. And that's not really true.
I know every note in every song, the whole history of it, even parts that were there and are gone.
I do understand that not everyone is going to sit and listen to an Enya album. When someone says it's not their cup of tea, it's not their kind of album, that's fine by me.
When making music I sink myself into the process as deeply as I can and forget all of the success.
It wasn't so long ago that it was not popular to speak Gaelic in Ireland because the areas that Gaelic is spoken in were much poorer areas.
The Druids held the trees as very sacred.
There is no formula to it. Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.
When you spend two to three years working on an album that I feel very happy with the end result, there is nothing I would change. Musically, I have achieved what I set out to do.
I always felt that the music sells by itself. The music has always been the successful aspect on my career, and that means that, to me, I can always still stay very focused on music.
I find I'm not one of these composers that are, you know, walking along a beach or walking on the mountainside in County Donegal that's, you know, 'Oh, a melody.' It's more a matter of eventually taking that moment with me to the studio, and it begins to evolve.
I find that music makes people just sit and listen, firstly. Then, they seem to interpret their own emotions with the music and it makes them ponder their own life a lot. And then they start to question: Am I happy in my work? Am I happy in my relationships? What am I striving for?