• May 17, 1961
• Enya (born Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin) is one of the most famous artists of the New Age genre. Her music can be described as soothing, with soft, rich vocals, use of synthesizer, and a Celtic flavor. Since the beginning of her career in the early 1980s, she has released eight studio albums and sold over 75 million copies.
• Enya was born in County Donegal in Ireland into a musical family. She joined a family band – made up of her siblings and her uncle – named Clannad, for which she played keyboards. After leaving the band she scored a BBC TV show and released the soundtrack in 1986 under her name. Her breakout album Watermark was released in 1988, featuring the single "Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)." The album went 4x Platinum and made her an international star.
• Enya won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album for her 1991 album Shepherd Moons, which remained on the Billboard charts for 199 consecutive weeks. She won the same award for her albums The Memory of Trees, A Day Without Rain, and Amarantine.
• Her producer, Nicky Ryan, helped Enya come up with her ethereal sound by having her record lots of vocals tracks and then working them into the mix, essentially using her voice as an instrument.
• Enya is notable for singing in many different languages. In addition to English, she has sung in her native Irish language dialect, Welsh, French, Latin, and Japanese. She has even sung invented languages, such as Loxian, invented by her producer's wife Roma Ryan, and those created by fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkein. Enya wrote two songs relating to The Lord of the Rings that were featured in Peter Jackson's movie, one of which was sung in Sindarin, one of which was sung in Quenya. The latter, titled "May It Be," was nominated for the Best Original Song Academy Award in 2001.
• Despite her fame, Enya generally manages to go about unnoticed. "As a musician, I love the fact that the success was on the music," she told Billboard magazine. "I always say that fame and success are two very different things... I had a choice - and not a lot of people have this choice - of whether to seek fame with this music or whether to stay back behind the music and let the music speak for itself. And, really, that's what I did."
• Home for Enya is a large castle built in 1840 next door to Bono's house. It can be found, just outside Dublin overlooking the coast. Enya renamed the 1840 castle, Manderley, after the one in Daphne Du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca, her favourite book.
• Enya has never been married or had children.
• In 2005 two people broke into the Enya's castle and tied up a maid; Enya fled into a panic room where she raised the alarm. Bono later sent her a note joking, "I'd have come over and tackled the stalker, but there was something good on the telly."
• Enya still sings in her mother's choir at midnight mass on Christmas at St. Mary's Church in Derrybeg.
• Enya has never gone on a concert tour, despite being Ireland's best-selling solo artist and second overall behind U2.

Comments: 3

• Gerald Bailey from Bu Cksport MaineGreat, soothing music.Thank you daughter Stephanie.
• Peter Loveland from Cape Town, South AfricaYour voice massages my very soul ....... Thank you!
• Supparod from Ayutthaya 2020 lets smile if we can even though there is less to smile about. Just stay brave and hope.

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