Who is the Dido?

Who Is DIDO?

 

Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong, known professionally as Dido Born in 1971 December 25 In Kensington. London, England. She is an English singer, songwriter and musician who rose to international prominence in 1999 with her debut album, No Angel. Known for her soothing voice and unusual duets, she has collaborated with many renowned artists throughout the years to create beautiful music. Dido has sold an estimated 30 million records worldwide and won her several awards, including two Brit Awards: Best British Female and Best British Album, and the MTV Europe Music Award for Best New Act. After releasing No Angel in 1999, and after much time spent promoting the album, Dido broke up with her fiancé, entertainment lawyer Bob Page, after a seven-year relationship. Dido married Rohan Gavin in 2010. They have one son, Stanley, who was born in July 2011. Dido says she is a "diehard" lifelong supporter of Premier League football club Arsenal. She holds dual British-Irish citizenship by virtue of having an Irish father. 

 The first verse of "Thank You" is sampled in "Stan", a collaboration with American rapper Eminem. Her next album, Life for Rent (2003), continued her success with the hit singles "White Flag" and "Life for Rent". In 2004, Dido performed with other British and Irish artists in the Band Aid 20 version of the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" .Dido's first two albums are among the best-selling albums in UK chart history, and both are in the top 10 best-selling albums of the 2000s in the UK. Her third studio album, Safe Trip Home (2008), received critical acclaim but failed to duplicate the commercial success of her previous efforts. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the song "If I Rise". Dido was ranked No. 98 on the Billboard chart of the top Billboard 200 artists of the 2000s (2000–2009) based on the success of her albums in the first decade of the 21st century. 

 

Dido made a comeback in 2013, releasing her fourth studio album Girl Who Got Away, which reached the top 5 in the UK. Having taken time out of the music industry to raise her son, she reappeared on stage at the 2013 Reading and Leeds festival where she reunited with Eminem. Dido released her fifth studio album, Still on My Mind, on 8 March 2019 and embarked on her first tour in 15 years in support of the new album. In May 2019, Dido received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.

 

 

DIDO'S GREATEST HIT SONGS

 

“Here with Me” (From No Angle, 1999)

 

Writers: - Dido Armstrong

                 Paul Statham

                 Pascal Gabriel

 

Produces: - Dido

                   Rick Nowels

 

Length: - 4.16

 

 

 

“Thank You” (From No Angle)

 

Writers: - D. Armstrong
                  Paulie Herman
 
Produces: - Dido
                    Rollo
 
Length: - 3.37

 

 

“Hunter” (From No Angle)

 

Writers: - D. Armstrong

                  Rollo Armstrong 

 

Produces: -Dido

                   Nowels

 

Length: - 3.57

               

 

 

“White Flag” (From Life for Rent 2003)

 

Writers: - D. Armstrong

                 R. Armstrong

                 Nowels

 

Produces: - Dido

                    Rollo

                    John Harrison

 

Length: - 4.01

 

                                                                               

“Life for Rent” (From Life for Rent)

 

Writers: - D. Armstrong

                  R. Armstrong

                  Nowels

 

Produces: -Dido

                   Rollo

 

Length: - 3.42

“Don’t Leave Home” (From Life for Rent) 

 

 

Writers:- DIDO Armstrong 

                 Rollo Armstrong

Producer:- Ryan Zacarias

                    Jeffrey Allard

Personal Life

Dido was born Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, at St. Mary Abbot's Hospital in Kensington, on Christmas Day in 1971. As she was born on Christmas Day, she also celebrates an "official birthday" on 25 June, following the example of Paddington Bear. Her mother, Clare (née Collins), is a poet of French ancestry, and her father, William O'Malley Armstrong (1938–2006), was an Irish publisher and former managing director of Sidgwick & Jackson. Her elder brother, Rowland Constantine O'Malley Armstrong, is better known as record producer Rollo, part of the British electronica trio Faithless.

Despite their birth names, the pair were known from childhood by the names Dido and Rollo. Dido considers hers as her real name, not simply a stage name or nickname. As a child, she had to deal with her birth name's ambiguous and unusual nature, which led to her being bullied and even to her pretending to have an ordinary name. In a 2001 interview, she said "To be called one thing and christened another is actually very confusing and annoying. It's one of the most irritating things that my parents did to me. Florian is a German man's name. That's just mean. To give your child a whole lot of odd names. They were all so embarrassing. I thought it was cruel to call me Dido and then expect me to just deal with it." The name "Dido" derives from the legendary Queen of Carthage.

Dido was educated at Thornhill Primary School in Islington, Dallington School, City of London Girls' and Westminster School, where she was taught by the contemporary musician and Head of Academic Music, Sinan Savaskan. After she stole a recorder from school at the age of five, her parents enrolled her at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. By the time she reached her teens, she had learned to play the piano, recorder, and the violin. She later studied law at Birkbeck, University of London, while working as a literary agent. She never completed the degree, deciding instead to take up music full-time. She married novelist Rohan Gavin in 2010. Their only son, Stanley, was born in 2011.

 

 

Career

 

1995–1996: Early recordings

1998–2002: No Angel and breakthrough

2003–2005: Life for Rent and Live 8

2006–2008: Safe Trip Home and hiatus

2009–2018: Girl Who Got Away and Greatest Hits

2018–present: Still on My Mind

 

 

Other Works

In addition to her solo work, Dido has co-written and provided vocals for tracks with Faithless, including "One Step Too Far"—which was released in the UK as a limited edition single, where it debuted at number six—and "No Roots", the title track of the fourth Faithless album. Rollo—Dido's brother—co-writes and co-produces much of Dido's solo material, including many tracks on No Angel, Life for Rent and Safe Trip Home.

She provided guest vocals for each of the six studio albums by Faithless, from 1996's Reverence to 2010s The Dance. Dido worked with her brother on a CD to accompany the children's book he wrote with Jason White, Safe from Harm; the CD is also titled Safe from Harm and the artist is listed as "Dusted". She co-wrote Britney Spears's worldwide number one hit "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman", soundtrack feature track to Spears's first major film debut, and co-wrote the song "Never Ending" on Rihanna's 2016 album Anti. Dido's song "Thank You" was also sampled by Rihanna for "Never Ending".

Dido has provided guest vocals to tracks by other artists including "Feels Like Fire" for Carlos Santana's 2002 album, Shaman, and a duet with Rufus Wainwrightentitled "I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger's Gone)" for the Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason film soundtrack. A sample of the Dido track "Do You Have a Little Time" is used on the song "Don't You Trust Me?" by Tupac, on the album "Loyal to the Game", which was almost entirely produced by Eminem in 2004.

Dido joined Annie Lennox and 21 other female artists to raise awareness of the issue of mother-to-child transmission of HIV to unborn children in Africa. The collaborative single "Sing" was released on World Aids Day on 1 December 2007, in conjunction with Lennox's appearance at the Nelson Mandela 46664 concert in South Africa.

 

 

 

Musical Achievements:

 

After briefly collaborating with her brother Rollo Armstrong’s electronica band Faithless, Dido embarked on a solo career and signed a record deal with Arista Records in 1996. Her debut studio album, No Angel, featured traces of electronica, folk guitars and her trademark tender vocals. Originally released in 1999, the album went on to sell over 30 million copies worldwide and found a bigger audience after its 2001 re-release. Dido has won numerous awards and accolades in her career, including four Brit Awards, two NRJ Awards, three World Music Awards, and a MTV Europe Music Award. Dido’s second studio album, Life for Rent (2003), spawned four hit singles: “White Flag”, “Life for Rent”, “Don’t Leave Home” and “Sand in My Shoes”. It sold more than 12 million units worldwide and stayed on the charts for 54 weeks. Her subsequent albums, Safe Trip Home (2008) and Girl Who Got Away (2013), were also huge successes. Dido has collaborated with a number of renowned international artists such as Carlos Santana, Brian Eno, Mick Fleetwood, Youssou N’Dour and Kendrick Lamar. In 2013, she released the album Greatest Hits, a collection of remixes and collaborations.