The lyrics are so timeless, the melodies so perfect that I had convinced myself that she had unearthed some long forgotten Irish folk standard, refusing to believe that they could not be more than a few years old. Take the two big ballads of the album, 'So I Could Find My Way' and 'I Could Never Say Goodbye'. Enya is probably the only artist who could get away with making up a language without being accused of being big-headed - her music sounds like it comes from another world, so it makes perfect sense that her lyrics should too.Įlsewhere, we can see Enya pulling one of the tricks that so many musicians long for but few ever manage to reach - creating a song sounds like it has been around forever. As the chorus implores, praise be indeed.Īnd just to prove that her music goes beyond us mere mortals, two of the songs are sung in a completely made-up language, Loxian, on ‘Forge of the Angels’, which is the closest the album comes to matching ‘Only Time’ and ‘The Loxian Gates’, which is the only song on Dark Sky Island to really surprise me, although largely because it sounds as if she’s buried one of Avicii’s trademark synths very deep in the mix. 'Echoes In Rain' has been touted as a sequel to her signature song ‘Orinoco Flow’, and is Enya at her most joyous and uplifting, and quite possibly her best lead single since ‘Anywhere Is’.
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The familiarity occurs across the album, although in many ways this is intentional. Right from the opening stabs of 'The Humming', we are firmly into familiar territory, with cascading piano lines, the infinitely multi-tracked vocals, and the warm, comforting lyrics that evoke the natural world so beautifully. On the contrary, the album is more a continuation of everything that has come before. It is my sincere hope that her ninth studio album, Dark Sky Island, will finally set the record straight, put those dismissals in the past, and finally respect Enya for the visionary talent that she is.Īnd it’s not because Dark Sky Island breaks new or unexpected territory for Enya. An episode of South Park even insinuated that her music can lead to murderous tendencies.
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Yet for all her success (or perhaps because of it), a lot of people tend to get awfully sniffy about her music, either dismissing it as boring, samey, uncool or as wishy washy 'New Age' (the last label I’ve always found to be rather odd, given that much of her music appears to be steeped in Catholic imagery, which is about as far away from 'New Age' as you can get). Music that has soundtracked everything from heartfelt 9/11 tributes and Lord of the Rings through to car ads with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and has influenced artists as far flung as Bat for Lashes and Nicki Minaj. The biggest selling solo artist to come from Ireland. Over 80 million albums sold to date, the extent of which has spawned its own economic term, 'Enyanomics'.
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The success that Enya has enjoyed in her 25-plus year career is enough to make anybody jealous.