YMMV / Enya

• Epic Riff: Admit it, some of her piano riffs are just plain awesome.
• Genius Bonus:
  • In between the verses of "Caribbean Blue", she sings the names of the Anemoi, the Greek wind gods—Eurus, Afer Ventus (Africus), Boreas, and Zephyrus.
  • Similarly, in between the verses of the title track to "Dark Sky Island" she sings the names of stars, constellations, and star systems, although this is a bit more of a gimme since one of them is Alpha Centauri and another, Sagitta, is sure to put in mind Sagittarius. Where the genius part comes in is what the inspiration for the song was, the isle of Sark, France which has committed to emitting no light pollution...so at night, it is indeed a "dark sky island" where one could always see the stars.
  • If you are able to understand the lyrics to every one of her songs without someone providing translation, congratulations, you're multilingual. (We won't count the handful of tracks sung in a completely made-up language; if you can understand those without translation, you're psychic.)
  • Among the rhyming, exotic place names from all over the world mentioned in "Orinoco Flow", many are very obscure to most audiences, and some are even rarely used any more.
    From Bissau to Palau in the shade of Avalon.
    From Fiji to Tiree and the Isles of Ebony.
    From Peru to Cebu, feel the power of Babylon.
    From Bali to Cali, far beneath the Coral Sea.
• Heartwarming Moments: In her music videos, Enya tends to appear dignified and a little aloof. When she lets this mask down, it often reveals a gentler side that makes for some incredibly sweet moments:
  • "Storms in Africa" is huge for this. Guiding a pair of children through a desert is bound to create some heartwarming moments. Of particular note is the moment when she bends down and kisses them on top of their heads.
  • Overlaps with Tear Jerker, but when Enya starts to tear up in the video for "So I Could Find My Way", it's easy to see how much she admired Mona.
  • During the final montage of "Only Time", she looks into the rain with the most honestly ecstatic expression on her face. A little out of place in such a melancholy song, but it's hard not to smile at that.
  • Of course, this leads to plenty of Crowning Moments of Funny too:
    • At the end of "Book of Days", she actually slams her book shut, as if she's just read something that she really didn't like.
    • The picture in "Anywhere Is" comes alive, Enya smiles at the viewer...and then returns to napping on her throne. Even a Celtic faery queen in disguise as a musician needs her sleep.
    • In "Only If", she teleports back and forth between different ends of the sofa she's sitting on. Seems like she's been having fun with those powers.
    • And then there's "I Want Tomorrow". The image of Enya magically blowing up a car is just so incongruous it's hard not to laugh at it, though it is pretty epic as well.
  • Plenty of examples in her songs as well, given her common use of You Are Not Alone as a theme:
    • "Solace"
    • "Remember Your Smile"
• Memetic Mutation: "Only Time"... thanks to Vine videos. The hyper-kinetic "MLG GET REKT" Vines would sometimes use the song. A separate meme involved someone being rotoscoped out of footage, appearing to fly away into space as the opening lyric played. A third meme involved syncing the song to clips of people slipping or falling, while slowing down the footage and rendering it in sepia-tone. These three memes overwrote "Only Time"'s association with the 9/11 attacks.
• Nightmare Fuel: Yes, Enya of all artists. One of the lines in the autumn section of "Only Time" is "who can say, when the day sleeps, if the night keeps all your heart?" It's a little elusive, but that line seems to mean "when you go to sleep, how do you know you're going to wake up?"
  • "Cursum Perficio" is fairly unsettling. As is "Boudicea". And "Pax Deorum" (except for the bridge passage).
• Refrain from Assuming:
  • "Orinoco Flow" is sometimes mistakenly (and even unmistakenly) given the title "Sail Away". (It's the song's official subtitle.) David Fincher actually admits to making this mistake in the commentary for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
  • A large proportion of fan-made music videos for "It's in the Rain" refer to it as "Listen to the Rain".
  • Sometimes "Echoes In Rain" appears to be Enya's "Halleluja" song, probably because of the refrain "Alleluia, alle-alle alleluia, alleluia, alle-lu-u-uia".
  • It's easy to assume "Book of Days" is called "Far and Away", as the latter words appear more often throughout the song than the former, which only show up once. Considering this song was (according to That Other Wiki) written first as an instrumental piece for the film of the same name, and the expanded version for Shepherd Moons had lyrics written by Roma Ryan "based on the film's themes", the recurrence of the phrase is likely intentional.
• Sampled Up:
  • The Fugees sampled "Boadicea" for their song "Ready Or Not". Surprisingly well done, though it did spark a threat of legal action by Enya as she did not authorize the sampling.
  • "I Don't Wanna Know" by Mario Winans also samples "Boadicea"; in this instance, Winans sampled the Fugees song without seeking permission from Enya; the single was credited to "Mario Winans featuring Enya & P. Diddy" as a compromise, creating the unusual situation of Enya reaching #2 on Billboard's R&B chart.
  • Rihanna sampled "One by One" for her song "Fading".
  • "Exlxaxl" by DJ Jappo & DJ Lancinhouse, and related remixes, famously sample "Exile".
• Signature Song: More than one:
  • "Orinoco Flow"
  • "Only Time".
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Every piece of music she has ever made, period. Though less so with "Orinoco Flow" after its use in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011).
• Tear Jerker:
  • She has a knack for being able to bring a tear to your eye. Some of the more memorable ones: "May It Be", "Evening Falls", "Fallen Embers". And those are just the ones that are usually agreed upon. She has a lot of songs that only make some people cry, she's a very subjective artist.
  • "Only Time" is something of a Tear Jerker in and of itself, being about loss, sorrow, and the inevitable disappearance or change of everything over time. But one of the first places it was ever played outside the radio (and the soundtrack of Sweet November) was during the episode of Third Watch in which Bobby Caffey was shot and died. It was then later used for countless 9/11 montages, which only upped the tear factor.
  • While a lot of her songs have poignant, pensive, heartfelt lyrics, there's something especially genuine and resonant about the bonus track from "Dark Sky Island", "Remember Your Smile".
  • "So I Could Find My Way" is this if you know the story behind it. ^{If you don't know...} It's about Enya's producer Nicky Ryan's mother, who Enya also knew. She passed away while Enya was working on the album the song appears on, so it was decided that the song would be dedicated to her.
  • There's a little-known song of hers that really deserves to be mentioned here: "I May Not Awaken". The song's tone is despairing, not even bittersweet like most of her other sad songs, and the imagery is just heartrending.
    One by one the sky falls
    I may not awaken
    • And that's before you figure out what the song is actually about. Though she does have the mercy to give us a scrap of a silver lining: it's implied the narrator gives herself hypothermia, which is supposed to be a relatively painless way to die.
  • It seems like she may sometimes work her magic too well. If you listen carefully, you'll notice her voice actually catches towards the end of the second verse of "I May Not Awaken", and she looks distinctly teary-eyed in the music video for "So I Could Find My Way".
  • In a more meta example, she says that the reason she's never married or had children is because she'd never be able to be sure whoever she was with loved her for her, and not her musical/financial success. The fact that she's had housebreakers and stalkers has probably reinforced this fear.
• Vindicated by History: There was a time that "Only Time" became overexposed and hated by many, but it was—dare we say—only time until it became popular again. It's all thanks to an automotive company, a Belgian action movie star, and his "most epic of splits". (And then Rob Ford had to come along and spoil everything...)
  • Kraft used the song in a Macaroni and Cheese ad campaign, showing somewhat bratty Picky Eaters behaving and eating mac & cheese with the song backing them. It may not have helped with Only Time's popularity.
  • And recently, it was featured in Thor: Love and Thunder as Korg narrates the legend of the Space Viking at the beginning of the movie.
  • Her work in general has been vindicated. While she's never exactly been hated by the masses, it took several decades for some groups of people to start to take her music seriously. She's just now getting credit for turning New Age music into a serious art form (despite her claims to not be associated with the music genre). Watermark and Shepherd Moons have both been celebrated as classics of the genre.

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