Name : Dido
Date of birth : 25 December 1971
Place of birth : London, England, UK
Birth name : Florian Cloud De Bounevialle Armstrong
Height : 5' 8
Dido Trivia
* Her first musical instrument was the recorder.
* Her song "Thank You" was sampled by rapper Eminem in his controversial
hit single "Stan".
* Brother is Rollo from the music group Faithless. Dido provided vocals
on Faithless recordings and shows.
* She entered London's Guildhall School of Music at the age of six.
* Was named after an African warrior queen.
* Was raised without television.
* Worked as a literary agent (her father's profession) while going to
law school and singing with her brother's band, Faithless.
* Her debut album, No Angel, was released in 1999. But only when the
TV show "Roswell" used her 'Here With Me' as its theme and rapper Eminem
sampled her 'Thankyou' into his 'Stan' on his smash, The Marshall Mathers
LP, did Dido gain the attention of mainstream audiences.
* Born in England but considers herself Irish.
* Took part in the Band Aid 20 re-recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?".
[November 2004]
Dido Detailed Biography
Dido was five when she stole her first recorder. This didn't lead to
prison, but rather to her entrance one year later to the Guildhall School
of Music in London. A bit of a child prodigy, by the time she was 10
she played piano, violin, and the aforementioned recorder.
Her teenage years were an interesting mixture of stealing her brother's
record collection (from The Clash to Gregory Isaac's to Duran Duran)
and touring the UK with her classical music ensemble and then, at 16,
she finally fell in love... with Ella Fitzgerald.
So began a passion that eventually led Dido from listener to participator.
She started singing with various bands in and around London, and despite
the fact that her brother, Rollo, told her not to give up her day job,
she eventually appeared on the debut album of a band that Rollo formed
in 1995.
This band was faithless, and they went on to sell in excess of five
million records. Over the next two years, Dido toured with faithless
(a very different experience from her classical days) and, whenever
she was back in London, also recorded demos of her own songs.
On Faithless's current release, Sunday 8pm, Dido appears on two songs,
one of which incorporates her own "My Lover's Gone." Arista records
heard these demos at the beginning of 1997, and Dido was invited to
the Dorchester hotel in London to meet Clive Davis. the meeting was
successful (Clive even helped out with some of the backing vocals as
Dido sung to him).
