[2] It became a global success, reaching number one in several countries, including Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, where it stayed at the top of the UK Singles Chart for three weeks.

Its pizzicato chords, generated by altering the Roland D-50 synthesizer's "Pizzagogo" patch, are highly recognizable as a new-age sound.

[7] The lyrics have been likened to "an itinerary for the most expensive gap year of all time",[8] mentioning an array of locations like a "global geography lesson".

[5] In a 2015 interview with The Irish Times, Enya said: “Longevity is all any artist dreams of”, rather than to dwell on how her songs are remembered.

It features Enya singing the song in front of footage of rivers, flowers and nature, edited to have the appearance of a painting.

After a wave of popularity, including regular rotation on MTV, the song became "a punch line",[10] representing a new-age cliché of "generic 'bubble bath' music".

In the 2017 Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode "Crime and Punishment", character Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) mentions Enya as one of his favorite musical artists.

[10] The song was briefly played during a monster cruise commercial in the 2018 film Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.

Burnham wrote to Enya directly for permission to use the song, and recognized it as a serious choice for the film; "in Eighth Grade, 'Orinoco Flow' finally gets to be itself" rather than "fodder for ironic laughs".