US playback report...20/11/08Last Saturday (15th November) Dido hosted a special US playback event, with around 60 fans who'd won tickets. It took place at a stunning location in Topanga Canyon, called the Mountain Mermaid. The venue was set way up in the hills of the rustic community outside LA. Dido wanted somewhere that was outside of the usual venue feel and which gave her the chance to see her fans up close and personal.As with the UK playback, Dido played a 45 minute acoustic set with her guitarist Joel Shearer. There were songs from previous albums (Thank You, White Flag and Life For Rent) and many from the new album. While she played them, you could have heard a pin drop.The fans came from far and wide - Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, UK and from all over America. It was like watching a show in your own living room. Well, assuming your living room had floor to ceiling windows of a spectacular canyon backdrop with panoramic views. There was some drama on the day, because of concerns for rolling power black outs, due to the fires in California. Dido had heard earlier on the news that we were due to get ours at 4:30pm - exactly the time she was to go on and perform. Fortunately the power stayed up and running. But the fires, which had started the night before, were present all around. By the end of the day, everyone was covered in bits of ash and smelling like they'd spent a weekend around a camp fire. As the sun set in the canyon it was really eerie as the colour of the sky wasn't the usual Los Angeles hues. Thankfully the Mountain Mermaid was absolutely fine, but it was a reminder of how crazy things can get in LA.The fans were transported up to the venue from Santa Monica and their faces were a real treat when the mini buses pulled up outside. They had no idea where they were. Greeted with drinks and appetizers, they soon let their hair down. One fan from Mexico insisted Dido stopped drinking water on stage and refill her glass with tequila, while an Australian fan who was enjoying his wine more than most was invited by Dido to grab her a glass on his next round. He didn't seem to get the hint.The event ended with a meet and greet / signing. It was, like the UK playback, an amazing day. We'll post photos from the performance up on the site in the next day or two...
'Dad's death became my inspiration': Dido pays tribute to her father in third albumBy Adrian ThrillsLast updated at 12:44 AM on 21st November 2008Comments (0) Add to My Stories By her own admission, Dido's upbringing was eccentric. In a house without a TV or stereo, the youngster and her older brother Rollo were left to create their own entertainment. The girl who would go on to become one of Britain's most successful female singers - and one of the few to crack the U.S. - was a self-contained child who began playing the recorder when she was four and spent weekends studying at the Guildhall School of Music long before she reached her teens. Dido was also very close to her father, William Armstrong, who ran the publishing house Sidgwick & Jackson for 25 years until poor health led to his early retirement in 1995.She may have been, in her own words, 'an odd little kid', but many of Dido's most cherished childhood memories are idyllic, revolving around the traditional Irish songs that her father used to sing to his two children every night. And, when William passed away two years ago, his death at 68 from the auto-immune disease lupus had a profound impact on the multi-million-record-selling singer. More...The next big thing: Twisted Wheel Already working on what would become her long-awaited third album, Safe Trip Home, Dido found herself writing songs that were inspired by her father. The poignant Grafton Street forms a cornerstone of the new record while The Day Before The Day contains further references to her strong family bonds. The dedication on the album sleeve reads simply: 'For Dad'. 'My dad's Irish music was such a huge influence on Rollo and I,' says the 36-year-old singer, speaking in the back of a tour bus as she travels to a small, acoustic show. 'As a child, I remember making requests to him - he would sing a different song every night.Enlarge Dido's latest album Safe Trip Home is more melancholy than previous albums'I used to see the world in terms of the songs that he sang for us. He was a truly kind, gentle and intelligent man, and I was so close to him. I felt awkward putting Grafton Street on the album, but the record had already been mastered by that point. I felt exposed. 'But, then again, I'm a songwriter. That's what I'm supposed to do. I write about the things I feel strongly about.' Dido dropped all work commitments as her father's health deteriorated, going to see him in hospital every morning and evening, and spending time with Rollo and her mother, Clare. She says that writing Grafton Street was easy. Talking about it now, she adds, is a lot tougher. 'It is deeply personal, but I'm glad it's on the album. It celebrates his memory and is a testimony to the times we spent together at the end of his life. 'He was a huge influence on me, and the general reaction to the song has been good.' Dido credits her parents - and her unorthodox background - with fostering the creative instincts that have seen both her and Rollo, a respected producer and founder member of the dance trio Faithless, carve out fruitful careers in music. Appropriately for the children of a publisher, they were raised in a house in Islington, North London, that was full of books. From an early age, the pair realised they were different from other children. At school, their packed lunches often consisted of dried banana chips and the previous night's leftovers. And Dido's full name - she is Florian Cloud De Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong on her birth certificate - made her stand out even more in the playground. Family influence: Dido credits her parents - and her unorthodox background - with fostering her creative instincts'I feel very warm towards Mum and Dad for giving us the independence they did,' she says. 'My childhood, and the fact we didn't have a TV, gave me a boundless imagination. 'I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.' Although Dido's new album, a reassuringly strong comeback, was recorded partly in Los Angeles, it was completed in London with the help of Rollo, 42, whom Dido calls her 'biggest inspiration'. The singer initially followed her father into publishing, but she always harboured a desire to make music her career. When Rollo formed Faithless in 1996, Dido was lurking in the background. She helped out by adding backing vocals to a track on their first album, Reverence, and then sang two songs on its follow-up, Sunday 8pm. More than a decade later, her working relationship with her brother is as strong as ever. 'When Rollo and I are working together, I feel as if we are two sides of the same brain,' she says. When she flew to LA two years ago to start work on Safe Trip Home, Dido, who rented a house in the Hollywood Hills, could have become a fully paid-up member of the Tinseltown set. Having toured the States regularly and sung with U.S. rapper Eminem, she would have been a welcome presence on any movie premiere red carpet. But Dido has always been a reluctant superstar. While contemporaries such as Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen are rarely out of the gossip columns, she keeps a much lower profile. For her, a stint in LA offered a chance to better herself as a musician and take the somewhat unlikely step of enrolling in night classes in English and music. 'I keep things simple,' she says. 'One of the things that excites me most is learning.' Living in a small apartment furnished with just a bed, piano and bag of clothes, Dido was surprised at how much she enjoyed LA. She blended in so unobtrusively with her new surroundings that she managed to complete her college courses without once getting recognised in class. She was also grateful for an opportunity to live a more routine life while she worked, having spent much of the previous eight years 'living on a tour bus'. She began to play guitar, piano, drums and recorder again, and her dedication to pure, unadulterated musicianship has had a significant impact on Safe Trip Home. Soft but heartfelt, the album represents a shift away from the electronic moods of old, towards a folkier sound. If her two previous albums, 1999's No Angel and 2003's Life For Rent, owed a good deal to her dance music roots, Safe Trip Home is a melancholy gem that has more in common with early Joni Mitchell. 'It was good for me to have a break and settle down with some instruments,' she says. 'For the first time in ages, I was playing for fun.' Safe Trip Home contains some highly personal lyrics. For a guarded woman, Dido is a remarkably candid songwriter. The singer - who split up with former fiance Bob Page in 2003 - uses one number, Never Want To Say It's Love, to sing of 'gently drifting' while her peers move on with their lives. But she insists the track is not autobiographical.'I'm not putting my life down in a diary. If you try to analyse me by listening to my new record, you'll get in a right old mess. My songs don't work like that.' Saying that she never talks about her personal life in public, she bats back a question about whether she is still single. 'I enjoy life and all it has to offer,' she says. 'And I get excited every day when I wake up. I don't care whether I'm misunderstood or not. I'd rather not have people knowing everything about me.'Album highlights QUIET TIMESA simple, acoustic track which finds Dido collaborating with older brother Rollo. 'We both came from an electronic background, but I wanted everything to be handplayed this time.' 8/10 GRAFTON STREETA tribute to Dido's father, with cameos from Brian Eno and drummer Mick Fleetwood. 'I'm a Fleetwood Mac fan, so having Mick in the studio was a real Jim'll Fix It moment.' 9/10 LOOK NO FURTHERDido plays piano on a haunting, poetic love song. 'It's my attempt at a romantic number,' she says. 'I've never been cynical about relationships. I'm the eternal optimist.' 9/10 Safe Trip Home is out now on RCA Records.
Here are some more of Dido's responses to the questions you've been emailing to askdido@didomusic.com.Dear Dido. I remember reading in interview you were sitting in you kitchen recording for your new album, Safe Trip Home, and you said you used a computer program. Did you use one particular one or a bundle of programs to make your music?JackDido replies: Just one - Logic 8. It's brilliant.Do you play/listen to classical music and does it have an influence on your music?Alex, GreeceDido replies: I do yes. I listen and play on the piano. I'm sure it has an influence on me melodically although hard to tell specifically how. It was so much part of my life it can't have failed to have an influence and those wonderful melodies become embedded in my brain. I love being able to read and write music and really enjoying learning all over again about orchestration. One of my favourite things is to listen to a beautifully playing orchestra play a song I've written. It's a truly great experience.I have heard that you play drums now, was it not difficult to learn, I mean in the beginning?Verner, DenmarkDido replies: Not difficult to get to the hopeless stage I'm at, no! But yes, I imagine hard to become a great drummer. I am practising...Dido. You can have any pudding/dessert in the world right now. What will you have?Pete, NewcastleDido replies: A lemon tart/lemon bar made my friend Pete.
Safe Trip Home hits charts around the world!27/11/08We've just received a rundown of chart positions for the new album, which is apparently flying off the shelves across theplanet! Here they are...Australia #6Austria #11Canada #9Finland #24France #3Germany #3Greece #2Holland #8Ireland #11Italy #11Spain #26Switzerland #1UK #2USA #13Huge thanks to everyone who's bought it so far.
"Home" is where Dido¡s heart isNEW YORK — As a child, Dido was "obsessed with space travel. I only wanted to be an astronaut. The idea just blew my mind."So it's fitting that a photo of the Earth taken on a 1984 Challenger mission is on the cover of the British singer/songwriter's first studio album in five years, Safe Trip Home.The album was inspired by the considerable ground that Dido, 36, has covered on the planet as a touring musician since 1999's No Angel. That multiplatinum debut established her as one of the most prominent artists of the Lilith Fair era. Dido spent much of the following decade accumulating frequent-flier miles, appearing at events such as 2005's Live 8. "In one way, it's made the world a very small place," Dido says over tea in Midtown. "I'm very conscious of the fact that we're all here together."But as the album's title suggests, Dido's journey has helped her realize "where home actually is. I'm someone who can feel at home anywhere. But the farther you go away, the more you realize that home is where your family and friends are."FIND MORE STORIES IN: London | Earth | Thailand | Los Angeles | Anatomy | Grey | Mumbai | Kanye West | Live | Challenger | Midtown | Blender | Fiona Apple | Joe Levy | Dido | Thank You | Jon Brion | Lilith Fair | White Flag | No Angel For Dido, that means London — though Home took shape in a different setting. In summer 2005, producer Jon Brion, noted for his adventurous but pop-savvy work with artists as diverse as Fiona Apple and Kanye West, suggested that Dido travel to Los Angeles to work on an album.It wasn't a natural destination. "I was brought up in the inner city," she says. "If I hadn't been working with Jon, I'd have been a bit bored. … (But) Jon is so joyful about it all. We were so productive and having so much fun that I didn't want to stop."Brion wasn't Dido's only source of inspiration, though. "I'm not that fussed about sunshine, but L.A. in the morning is just stunning. And it's home to the film industry, so it's a city built on storytelling, on people using their imaginations."In fact, for Home— which was also recorded in London, with Dido's brother and longtime collaborator, Rollo Armstrong, pitching in — Dido commissioned 11 short films, one to accompany each song. "I found local directors in different countries and told them the theme was 'What is home?' " The resulting clips, set in locales from a Thai boxing ring to a Mumbai taxicab, can be viewed at safetriphome.com. Home hasn't yet yielded a hit on the order of previous Dido singles such as White Flag or Thank You, but "you don't take three years to make a record if that's your concern," says Blender editor in chief Joe Levy. He points out that her music remains "enormously popular with music supervisors for television and movies," and one track, Quiet Times, was recently featured on Grey's Anatomy.For her part, Dido doesn't mind maintaining a lower profile. "I've always been an introvert, and as you get older, all your characteristics get more pronounced," she says. Though she allows that the five years since her last album "have had some dramatic highs and lows," she prefers not to discuss them in detail. "It's amazing — I've had 15 kids," jokes the singer, who is single and has no children, when pressed for specifics.Then, more seriously, and vaguely, Dido says: "I have a relatively normal life, in which there's been an exceptional freedom to travel and to make music. And I feel so lucky for that."Share this story:
The person who gets Dido songs on TV...04/12/08Tomorrow night at 8pm, Dido's song Quiet Times will feature on the new episode of Ghost Whisperer on CBS in the US. We caught up with Lindsay Wolfington of Lone Wolf Music Supervision, to find out how the song made it onto the show.Hi Lindsay. We hear you've requested Quiet Times for two TV placements. Of all the songs at your disposal, what is it about that song that lent itself to use on the shows?It's emotional, quiet enough to stay under dialogue and has movement, which keeps the episode moving along. It worked well for One Tree Hill because we needed a song that could tie together three different scenes and had a little suspense - a sense of "what's going to happen?" We always need songs like that. It also just happened that the lyric "I miss you" played under Peyton and Lucas on the phone with each other, and they almost said "I miss you" to each other along with Dido! As for the Ghost Whisperer use of Quiet Times, I can't say exactly because the episode doesn't air until Dec 5th! Let's just say the mood is right and the lyrics hit perfectly - the song expresses what the characters cannot. Tune in to see what I mean. CBS, Fridays at 8pm. Hey, I'm not afraid of a shameless plug!When placing music, do you choose a song because its lyrics connect with the storyline or because the music itself is suited for the mood of the scene?As you can probably tell from my answer above, both lyrics and music are important factors in picking a song for a scene. Sometimes you pick a song more for the mood because you don't want to hit the viewers over the head with a lyric, but sometimes the lyrics say what the characters don't, and that is why the song works. When both of these combine, that's the best possible scenario.Would you say that Dido's music is "cinematic"?Dido's music definitely fits pictures nicely. Each album is different, but I think she works well for TV and film because her vocals are soft - they don't get in the way of dialogue, which is important because dialogue is telling the story and is the first priority of a producer or director. She also has that "girl with a heartache" thing going for her. Music Supervisors always need those emotional songs on hand for the next sad or longing moment. Interestingly, I don't think Quiet Times is a typical sad ballad - it works because it has pace and momentum, but still has heart and emotion. It's hard to find a song that moves along but can still make you want to cry.Did your educational background prepare you for a career as a Music Supervisor?I took one class called "Soundtracks" in college, but it wasn't really about Music Supervision. It was literally the study of all sounds in film - foley footsteps, sound effects, score. There was nothing about picking songs for scenes and then learning how to license them. I worked in radio for four years and that definitely gave me a good base for working in the music industry. But moving to LA and working for two Music Supervisors was where I really learned how to do the job. Nowadays, there are many more classes about Music Supervision/Licensing/Business, but I still think the best way to learn it and get into this world is by working for a Music Supervisor. I get tons of young people who email me via MySpace wondering what classes they should take in high school and what they should major in college, and I want to say "Enjoy school while you can! Take the classes you like, and if they involve the music business, great. But you have to work in the field to really learn it, make connections and prove yourself."Finally, what's your favorite Dido song?I'm going to cheat and name two, because they are so different. I loved Dido's first album, No Angel, during my senior year in college -before it became a best seller. It was my little secret and I got all my girlfriends to fall in love with it too. And then I remember hearing Thank You on Dawson's Creek and thinking "The world has found Dido!" But I digress... Hunter was my favorite track on that album. There were a couple "kickass girl" songs on it, and that was mine. And now with the new album, I love The Day Before The Day. It is so genuinely beautiful, simple and sad. I've always had a soft spot for sad songs. It's amazing to think how different No Angel and Safe Trip Home are, yet they both have some real gems on them!(Big thanks to Lindsay for taking the time to answer our questions)
Hey folks. From Monday, download stores everywhere will be selling the Dennis Ferrer Objektivity Mix of Don't Believe In Love.
