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.
When making music I sink myself into the process as deeply as I can and forget all of the success.
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 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?
Wintertime for me is a time when I do a lot of my writing in the studio. It's a time I enjoy. And it's very reflective and a very calming time of the year. Throughout the year I gather a lot of musical inspirations, and this is where I bring them to the studio and see what will evolve musically.
My influences are with Irish music, church music and classical music,
I find it hard to work with other musicians because I know from experience that when they play, they play with their feeling, and that restricts me because I know I want to play in my own particular way.
Music is like a mirror in front of you. You're exposing everything, but surely that's better than suppressing. ... You have to dig deep and that can be hard for anybody, no matter what profession. I feel that I need to actually push myself to the limit to feel happy with the end result.
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.
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.