Enya

Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin^{[pronunciation?]} (born 17 May 1961; anglicised as Enya Patricia Brennan), known mononymously as Enya, is an Irish singer and composer. With an estimated equivalent of over 80 million albums sold worldwide, Enya is one of the world's best-selling music artists. In addition to being the best-selling Irish solo artist, she is the second-best-selling music act from Ireland overall, after the band U2. Enya's music has been widely recognised for its use of multi-layers of her own vocals and instrumentation, lengthened reverb, and interwoven elements of Celtic music.

Raised in the Irish-speaking region of Gweedore, Enya began her musical career in 1980 playing alongside her family's Irish folk band, Clannad. She left Clannad in 1982 to pursue a solo career, working with the former Clannad manager and producer, Nicky Ryan, and his wife Roma, as their lyricist. Over the following four years, Enya further developed her sound by combining multi-tracked vocals and keyboards with elements from a variety of musical genres, such as Celtic, classical, Gregorian chant, church, jazz, hip-hop, ambient, world, and Irish folk. Her earliest solo releases were two piano/synthesiser instrumentals for the Touch Travel T4 cassette compilation (1984) composed around 1982–83. The majority of the soundtrack for The Frog Prince (1985) was composed by Enya, and she sang two songs with lyrics for the project. Enya also composed a body of work for a documentary series by the BBC named The Celts. A selection of Enya's pieces for The Celts was released as her self-titled debut album in 1986, with the documentary and BBC Records releases in 1987.

The chairman of Warner Music at the time, Rob Dickins, enjoyed listening to Enya's music for The Celts and signed her with Warner Music UK. The initial record deal granted her considerable artistic freedom and minimal interference. The success of her second studio album, Watermark (1988), propelled Enya to worldwide fame, primarily through her international hit single "Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)". In the following decade and up to the new millennium, she released the multi-million-selling albums Shepherd Moons (1991), The Memory of Trees (1995), and A Day Without Rain (2000). Sales of A Day Without Rain and its lead single, "Only Time", surged in the United States following its use in media coverage of the September 11 attacks. Her subsequent releases included Amarantine (2005), And Winter Came... (2008) and Dark Sky Island (2015).

"Boadicea", a track from her eponymous album, appeared in the soundtrack of Stephen King's 1992 horror film Sleepwalkers and has since been sampled in several hit songs, including "Ready or Not" (1996) by Fugees and "I Don't Wanna Know" (2004) featuring Mario Winans, which became the second Number 1 single featuring Enya, in the UK charts. The song, featuring both the synthesiser and Enya humming the melody, continues to be sampled almost 4 decades since its initial 1986 release.

Enya's accolades include four Grammy Awards, six World Music Awards, and she holds the record as the most-nominated female Irish artist at the BRIT Awards, with four nominations. "May It Be", her composition from the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. In 2025, Enya received the RTÉ Choice Music Prize's Classic Irish Album award for her 1988 breakthrough album Watermark.

Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin was born in the Dore area of Gaoth Dobhair (Gweedore) in County Donegal on 17 May 1961. She is the sixth of nine children in the Brennan family of musicians, born to Máire "Baba" and Leopold "Leo" Brennan. In 1968, the couple took ownership of a pub in Meenaleck, Co. Donegal, naming it Leo's Tavern. Enya's father, Leo Brennan was the leader of an Irish showband named the Slieve Foy Band, before performing solo. Enya's mother, Baba Brennan (née Duggan) is said to have Spanish roots with ancestors who settled on Tory Island, and she was an amateur musician who played with the Slieve Foy Bandand also taught music at Gweedore Community School.

Enya talked about the prevalence of the sea in her music, influencing her since childhood. 'The sea has been in my heart since I was a little girl. I grew up in Gaoth Dobhair, an Irish-speaking parish on the Atlantic coast of County Donegal, in the northwest corner of Ireland. The area is known for its rugged cliffs and windswept beaches, and the sea’s moods and spirit still find their way into my music.'

Gweedore is a Gaeltacht region, where the Irish language, also known as Gaelic, is primarily spoken. Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin, her name, is anglicised as Enya Patricia Brennan, with "Enya" being the phonetic spelling of how "Eithne" is pronounced in the Donegal Ulster dialect.