WEA
New Age, 1991

After Watermark comes Shepherd Moons, and… okay, let’s cut to the chase.

I don’t care what anyone says. Caribbean Blue is the Enya experience. It’s the ultimate ethereal, otherworldly dreamscape—so hypnotic that it should come with a warning label: “May cause spontaneous levitation and/or existential musings about floating through time and space.” Who needs hypnotherapy when Enya’s here to whisper Gaelic sweet nothings into your soul?

This album sees Enya pulling out all the stops, like an overachieving bard at a Renaissance fair.

Marble Halls and How Can I Keep From Singing? bring in some operatic grandeur, because why not go full 19th-century noblewoman in a candlelit castle?

Meanwhile, Afer Ventus, Smaointe, and Ebudae channel a stormy, mystical mood that makes you feel like you’re summoning spirits on an Irish cliffside.

Then there are the pure instrumentals, which basically sound like they were composed by a celestial being who occasionally moonlights as a composer for nature documentaries.

The entire album is peak Enya, with otherworldly vocals, lush synth soundscapes, and a general sense that you might be a lost elven noble remembering your past life. You don’t just listen to Shepherd Moons; you drift through it like a spectral being searching for the love you lost in the 12th century. Every reverb-drenched harmony and cascading arpeggio pulls you deeper into this shimmering, melancholic dreamscape where time and space blur into a misty, harp-filled eternity.

It’s no surprise Shepherd Moons won the Grammy for Best New Age Album and remains one of Enya’s best-selling works. This was the era when her music still felt fresh and boundless, before she locked herself into the cozy-but-predictable template of later albums. This is Enya at her most evocative, balancing haunting beauty with sweeping cinematic grandeur, like the soundtrack to an epic saga that only exists in your mind.

It’s as if Enya and the Ryans distilled all the potency of Watermark and The Celts, then, like musical alchemists, crafted an even more intoxicating elixir. Every song tells an evocative story, even if—let’s be honest—this reviewer has no idea what Enya is actually singing half the time. But that’s part of the magic!

Best Enya album ever.

Enjoy it while it lasts, because after this, Enya and the Ryans decided they’d cracked the code to dreamy perfection and just started copy-pasting it onto new albums for eternity.