Enya's "Only Time" — Four-panel stick figure webcomic about two friends listening to Enya and having a transcendent experience

Enya's "Only Time"

2004viral videoclassic

Published October 9, 2026

"Only Time" is a 2000 new age ballad by Irish singer Enya that found a second life online as ironic background music for videos of people getting hurt, dying, or hitting unexpected emotional beats1. First used in YTMND pages memorializing deaths in 2004, the song became the default soundtrack for 9/11 tribute montages and later a staple of montage parody and rekt compilations2.

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Overview

The joke rides on the gap between Enya's airy Celtic vocals and whatever is happening on screen, which is usually someone eating pavement, getting bonked, or dying in a dumb way3. The track's slow opening piano and the chorus line "Who can say where the road goes" cue viewers that something either very sincere or very stupid is about to be dignified beyond its actual weight.

Two flavors of the format run in parallel. The sincere version soundtracks 9/11 tribute videos and in-memoriam montages, a usage traced directly to Enya's post-attack performance on Larry King Live in late 20012. The ironic version strips that sincerity for laughs, dropping the song over slapstick injuries, rekt compilations, and montage parody edits where the solemn score makes a trivial moment feel like a national tragedy3.

Origin & Background

Platform
YTMND / YouTube (viral spread)
Date
2004

Enya released "Only Time" on November 20, 2000 as the lead single from her fifth album A Day Without Rain, and it climbed to number ten on the Billboard Hot 1001. Weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Enya performed the song on CNN's Larry King Live to honor victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, which seeded its long run as the default soundtrack for amateur 9/11 tribute videos2.

The ironic turn started on YTMND. On July 16, 2004, user CaptainPancakes submitted a page titled "Never forget 5/3" that paired an image of a cliff face with "Only Time" looping behind it4. YTMND pages referencing death or demise kept pulling in the track over the next several years3.

How It Spread

The song jumped to broadcast TV in November 2004 when MTV's Viva La Bam used it in the episode "Bamiature Golf"3. YouTube picked up the sincere version first, with user nypd911 posting a 9/11 memorial set to the song on May 1, 20075, and a search for "9/11 tribute Enya" returned over 16,900 results by March 20163.

Fandom and ad use kept the sound alive through the 2010s. On August 26, 2008, user manuela uploaded a Legolas montage from The Lord of the Rings scored to the track6, and SoundCloud user Mozdec Zero posted a dubstep remix on January 1, 2011 that pulled hundreds of thousands of plays3. Volvo pushed the song to a global audience on November 13, 2013 with the Jean-Claude Van Damme Epic Split commercial, where Van Damme performs the splits between two reversing trucks as Enya plays underneath7.

The montage parody wave then fully claimed the track. On May 26, 2014, Pyrocynical uploaded "MLG Teletubbies" using "Only Time" alongside standard rekt tropes, pulling over 9.1 million views within two years8. Vine creators ran with the pattern through 2014 and 2015, including a widely looped clip of a man dressed as Jesus reacting to a playground, and Filthy Frank folded it into an October 2, 2015 life hacks parody3.

Timeline

2000-11-20

Enya releases "Only Time" on the album A Day Without Rain; the single later peaks at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100[1].

2001-11

Enya performs "Only Time" on Larry King Live for 9/11 victims, seeding its use in tribute videos[2].

2004-07-16

YTMND user CaptainPancakes posts "Never forget 5/3," an early ironic pairing of the song with imagery of death[4].

2007-05-01

YouTuber nypd911 uploads a 9/11 memorial video set to "Only Time"[5].

2013-11-13

Volvo releases the Van Damme Epic Split ad using the song, which pulls tens of millions of views[7].

2014-05-26

Pyrocynical uploads "MLG Teletubbies," cementing the song as a montage parody staple[8].

2015-10-02

Filthy Frank uses "Only Time" in a life hacks parody featuring staged hamster abuse[3].

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