Nicky Ryan and his wife Roma helped Enya to become a hugely successful recording artist in 1980s and 1990s
Despite Enya being one of my all-time favorites, someone who I've followed for nearly 40 years, I only found out about the death of Nicky Ryan today - but he actually died in September.
For those who aren't too familiar with Enya, although the singer of course is the spotlight, "Enya" has always been a trio: Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, who goes by the Anglicized name Enya, who is the composer, singer, and plays many of the instruments; Roma Ryan, who writes most of the lyrics; and producer (and I believe arranger) Nicky Ryan, Roma's husband. They have been working together ever since Enya left her family's musical group, Clannad, in the mid-1980s for a solo career. After composing the score for an obscure film called The Frog Prince (no relation to the fairy tale) and releasing her first album - the soundtrack to a BBC documentary series called The Celts - Enya had her (or should I say their) first major success in 1988 with the song "Orinoco Flow".
She never had a hit of that size again but the music has still been influential. She was offered to do the score for Titanic but declined (so James Cameron just had another composer do a score in Enya's style instead), and was nominated for a Best Song Oscar for "May it Be" from the first Lord of the Rings movie. Her 2000 recording, "Only Time", was adopted by American media as the song they'd almost always play in retrospectives about 9/11. Fans weren't too thrilled about that though I believe Enya reissued the song as a fundraiser.
Her work is often categorized as "new age" but this has always been understood as being a placeholder category, as her work has often been described as being its own genre.
Due to Enya being a self-confessed slow worker, after their first few albums the interval between releases increased. Their most recent album, Dark Sky Island, came out 11 years ago.
And the question now is: will that stand as the final album by Enya? There has been no indication of a new album being in preparation and Enya herself is approaching retirement age and lives a reclusive lifestyle (she lives in a renovated castle in Dublin next door to Bono - I kid you not) and has never toured due to the difficulty of replicating her sound live (plus I think she just doesn't want to). The death of Nicky Ryan, one of the pillars of "Enya", might spell the end for one of my favorite performers, which is a shame. But RIP to Nicky Ryan, even if it's a few months late.
