Enya Biography
Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin (born 17 May 1961), known mononymously as Enya, is an Irish composer and singer-songwriter. The music of Enya is widely recognised for featuring multi-layers of her vocals, varied instrumentation, lengthened reverb, and subtle Celtic elements. Her career as a solo artist, now over four decades long, is notably an atypical path to success in the music industry. As the second-best-selling Irish music act overall, after rock band U2, Enya is the best-selling Irish solo artist, believed to have sold over 80 million albums worldwide.Enya was raised in the Irish-speaking region of Gweedore. In 1980, Enya (as Eithne Ní Bhraonáin) began her musical career playing alongside her family's Celtic 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 partner Roma, as their lyricist. Over the following four years, Enya developed her sound by combining multitracked vocals and keyboards with elements from a variety of musical genres such as Celtic, classical, church, jazz, ambient, world, pop, hip-hop and Irish folk. The earliest releases by Enya as a solo artist were two 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, however these were not heard in-film. Enya composed a body of work for the BBC documentary series named The Celts (1986). A selection of her pieces for The Celts were released as her debut album, Enya (1987). Former chairman of Warner Music, Rob Dickins found himself enjoying the music from The Celts. He happened to meet the trio, expressed his interest in Enya's music, and so she agreed to sign with Warner Music UK. The initial record deal granted her considerable artistic freedom and minimal interference. The success of Watermark (1988) propelled Enya to worldwide fame, helped mostly ...