Yet when I tried to posit her as a peer of those artists, the stares I received were blank and pitying. I found in her music that same pinch of the infinite I felt listening to “An Ending (Ascent),” by Brian Eno, or “Polynomial-C,” by Aphex Twin. I adored Enya for the sonic worlds she charted for her listeners: filled with pomp and grandiosity, yes, but also rivers of deep and intense wonder. When I was a teenager, Enya was hugely famous but never especially cool, at least not among people my age. Within the spiraling melody of ‘Aldebaran’ there is euphoria and gravitas, as well as something approaching dread. Listen to some of the best new recordings here. Classical Music: 2021 was a year of reawakening for the art form.Jazz Albums: Even the big-statement albums this year had a feeling of intense closeness.Pop Albums: Recordings with big feelings and room for catharsis made the most powerful connections.Best Songs: A posthumous political statement and a superstar’s 10-minute redo are among the 66 best tracks of 2021.How, then, could Enya reduce this same man to tears?įrom Lil Nas X to Mozart to Esperanza Spalding here is what we loved listening to this year. After all, even Aphex Twin’s most soothing ambient works often made him unplug my CD player, as if their nontraditional musical forms might damage our wiring. It just confused me to see my father similarly moved. Her melodies recursed and interwound her vocals shimmered and shone, at once new and old, alien and familiar. I was mesmerized by the folding synthscapes of “Caribbean Blue” or “Sumiregusa (Wild Violet),” which hit my childhood ears like probes from a far-flung planet. I, a youthful devotee of ambient music, loved Enya for her place in that genre’s canon.
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The global success of this mélange of Irish traditional music and new-age electronica was unlikely given that the bulwark of her fandom, in Ireland at least, appeared to be people like my father: rank traditionalists entering middle age, few of whom would have countenanced synthesizers, arpeggiated strings or heavy reverb in any other aural context. Enya’s music is suffused with an aura of mysticism so nebulous it borders on the occult nevertheless it enraptured a man so Catholic he would interrupt family holidays with cheerful visits to Marian shrines. Her music wasn’t like anything else he listened to, but then, it’s not much like the music anyone else makes either. My father’s fascination with Enya was mysterious. But none of those artists struck me like my father’s personal favorite, Enya. The cheerful ribaldry of the Dubliners, Christy Moore’s “Live at the Point” and the earnest, heart-tugging confessionals of Eleanor McEvoy and Mary Black all soundtracked our winding trips through the unending swatches of green that formed the Irish countryside. Many of these would be familiar to any Irishman from that time. On the long drives through Ireland that peppered my childhood like bouts of flu, my father played songs from a small pool of classic albums.