BIG
IN AMERICA
Unknown here, the
Islington-born singer Dido has taken the States by storm - with a little
help from Gwyneth and Eminem, by Dan Cairns.
Heard the one about
the young British singer-songwriter who has just sold 1m records in
America? Chances are you haven't, though that it exactly what the
28-year-old Dido Armstrong has done. In the week when Sade's new
album entered the US charts at no. 3 - and a month after Radiohead's Kid
A went straight in at the top - the recent doom-mongering about the
sorry state of Britain's musical export industry begins to look a little
alarmist.
But Sade and Radiohead
are household names. Dido (she trades without her surname) is
another matter. So how has this former literary agent - who did her
A-levels at Westminster and studied recorder, piano and violin at
Guildhall School of Music and Drama - succeeded where so many have failed?
The notorious American
rapper Eminem could claim some of the credit; he used a sample from Dido's
song Thank You on his current single, Stan. This has
achieved what mere album sales have failed to do, and alerted the British
music press to the steady presence in the American charts of one of their
own. And the possibility that Stan may be a controversial
Christmas no. 1 can only add to Dido's exposure.
"Of course that
sample did me a big, big favour," she has acknowledged. "I
adore Eminem, but it'd be tacky to exploit it." Evidence that
this remark is a touch disingenuous can be found in Dido's recent
appearance with the rapper on America's Saturday Night Live, and
her role in the video that accompanies Stan.
She would no doubt
argue, with plenty of justification, that hard graft and a quality product
played a far greater role in promoting her album, No Angel, than
the lifting of an acoustic-guitar part by the 10m-selling foul-mouthed enfant
terrible. Certainly both her songs and her voice suggest an
artist with staying power and a talent to beguile. The 12 tracks
that make up No Angel update the bittersweet soul of vintage Sade,
while Dido's singing recalls the evocative hoarseness of Sinead O'Connor
and the understated lyricism of Everything But The Girl's Tracey
Thorn. It is a radio-friendly formula that looks set to prove just
as successful in Britain.
Dido isn't completely
unknown back home, however. Before recording No Angel in
1998, she was a member of the UK trip-hoppers Faithless, a band led by her
brother Rollo, and appeared on their platinum albums Reverence and Sunday
8pm. But it is since leaving, and signing a solo deal with
Arista Records in America, that Dido's star has really begun to shine.
Eighteen months after
releasing No Angel in America, the singer looks back at how her
initial master-plan was rewritten by events beyond her control.
"The idea was to spend six months over there and see what
happened," she has said. Then luck stepped in.
The first beneficial
twist of fate came when Thank You was used over the closing credits
of the Gwyneth Paltrow film Sliding Doors, prior to No Angel
even being released. Then the album's opening track, Here With Me,
was chosen as the theme song for the hit American television series Roswell
High. No Angel, from selling an average of 3,000 copies a
week, was suddenly picking up sales of 40,000.
"Promoting
records is like being in a marathon," Dido said of the long, hard
slog that she has put in over the past year. She particularly
remembers a kind of musical beauty contest she took part in.
"We were won in a competition and sent off to someone's house to do a
concert."
If she had listened to
her brother, none of this might have happened. When she was mulling
over the choice of continuing with her day job in London or taking a
chance on a career in music, Rollo urged caution. But creativity won
over practicality. "Music was what I really loved. I had
a really good job: Rollo thought I was mad to give it up. But the
fact that my brother hadn't really wanted me to do it just made me work
all the harder."
No Angel is
relaunched here in February with a British tour. Richard Griffiths,
the chairman of her UK record company, is bullish. "However big
Dido is now is not a drop in the ocean compared to what she's going to
be," he has predicted. "We will sell 5m worldwide."
Heady stuff for a
down-to-earth Islington girl who decided at the age of 17 to jack in music
- "I wasn't going to be a classical concert pianist because I wasn't
good enough" - get a decent job and read for the law at night.
But along with her instantly appealing songs and memorable voice, there is
another quality in Dido that many, including her brother, may have failed
to recognise: her bloody-minded determination. "I'd get up at
4.30am to do breakfast shows," she remarked of her American
promotions, "and I never questioned it. I just thought it was
what you did. But it paid off."
She can say that
again. And now it's our turn to see what all the fuss is about.
Source: The Sunday
Times, 10.12.2000
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