Art & Creativity Quote by Enya

Enya’s line lands because it’s delivered with the calm of someone whose work is famously serene, yet it describes a media ecosystem built on whiplash. “Brutal” isn’t hyperbole here; it’s a practical warning about the UK music press tradition of building artists up as symbols, then tearing them down as sport. The pivot from “wonderful things” to “you’re in the can” captures the speed of that cycle, but also the arbitrariness. It’s not that the music changed overnight; the narrative did.

The phrasing matters. “Over in the UK” creates distance, as if she’s speaking from the protective perimeter of Ireland and, more importantly, from her self-contained career. Enya didn’t play the usual pop game of constant visibility; she cultivated rarity, privacy, and a sound that resists trend-chasing. That makes her especially sensitive to how criticism often isn’t about the work’s quality as much as the critic’s need for novelty, authority, or a clean storyline.

“You’re in the can” is tellingly industrial, almost like being shelved or discarded. It frames artists as product in a system that has to keep moving, and critics as the gatekeepers of cultural momentum. Underneath the complaint is a cool-eyed strategy: don’t confuse press weather with artistic climate. If praise and punishment are that interchangeable, neither deserves total control over your self-understanding.