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
Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.
There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey. The first note has to lift you and make you go, 'What's this?' You play C, but why is it that one day it leads to G and it didn't yesterday? I don't know. It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting.
The writing of a melody is an emotional moment; success doesn't make it easy.
I'm not one for walking the beaches humming a melody. I love the discipline of sitting in the studio, writing and listening. That is my domain.
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.