Enya

Thanks to her preternatural gift for weaving ambient textures and multilingual vocals into towering songs, Enya has become one of the most successful Celtic musicians of all time, having sold an estimated 75 million records worldwide and scored four Grammys, five Billboard Music awards, and an Oscar® and Golden Globe nomination. The Irish singer born Eithne Ní Bhraonáin in 1961 began her musical career far more modestly as a keyboardist in her family’s Celtic folk band, Clannad, in 1980. Two years later, she teamed up with manager and producer Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan, to launch what would become a mega-successful solo career. Together they honed a lush, layered, multilingual sound and scored a massive hit in 1988 with “Orinoco Flow” from the album Watermark, which blended Enya’s otherworldly voice with slick production and a hint of Celtic undertones. A string of successful albums followed, including 1991’s Shepherd Moons, 2000’s A Day Without Rain, and 2015’s Dark Sky Island, all of which seamlessly blended new age ideology, world beats, and celestial soundscapes. Enya’s dreamy songs found 21st-century fans through the singer’s contribution to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, "May It Be," which added Elvish to the singer’s list of lyrical languages.