Personalities | Dido | Twenty-First Century | Rock

(Singer-songwriter, b. 1981)

The daughter of a French poet mother, this singer was born Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong on Christmas Day. She waited on the sidelines while her musician brother, Rollo Armstrong (of the band Faithless), achieved pop success in the mid-1990s. But encouraged after providing vocals for some of his tracks, her own songwriting came to the fore. When 1998’s serene ‘Thank You’ was sampled in part by rapper Eminem for his own ‘Stan’ single, music lovers around the globe clamoured to find the source.

The profile provided by the sample provided fresh interest in her No Angel album (1999), a collection of smooth, sultry ballads and slightly rockier numbers that struck a chord with a middle-aged, often middle-class audience keen to identify with this new ‘everywoman’. It has sold in excess of 13 million copies worldwide, and the follow-ups, 2003’s Life For Rent, and 2008’s Safe Trip Home, were very much a continuation of the same themes.

Styles & Forms | Twenty-First Century | Rock
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Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley

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