“Orinoco Flow” by Enya

"Orinoco Flow" floated out of Enya's second studio album, Watermark, on 3 October 1988, and nothing else on the radio sounded remotely like it: plucked, layered, gliding, a one-woman choir rowing downstream. Enya wrote the music and sang it, Roma Ryan wrote the words, and Nicky Ryan produced, co-producing with Enya and Ross Cullum and sharing the arrangements with her. The title nods both to Orinoco Studios, where they recorded it, and to the South American river.

It sailed to number one in Britain for three weeks and topped the charts in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, reaching 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1989. It picked up 2 Grammy nominations, for Best Music Video and Best New Age Performance, and in 2020 The Guardian placed it 77th among the 100 greatest UK number ones.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.