Dido good/bad your veiws please

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dido good/bad your veiws please!

― lyndon harrison, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i never liked Trailer Park, or the chemical brothers collaborations either, thought it was dull coffee table rubbish

― gareth, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I like her, but I won't give you my veiw because I don't know what that means.

― Kodanshi, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think you're confusing her with Beth Orton Gareth...

― Nicole, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I couldn't belive her nerve, sampling like a whole 30 seconds from Eminem then making it suck.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

dido = roswell high = porky's in space = RoXoR

rollo = woodentop = wooden all the rest also

― mark s, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think you're confusing her with Beth Orton Gareth

they're different people??

― gareth, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dido = Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong

Rollo Faithless = Roland Armstrong

Rollo Woodentop = Rollo McGinty

all three = the return of the repressed.

― Andrew L, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(i know i just like pretending all rollos = one)

dear god is florian cloud de wotsit her actual real name?

― mark s, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You can roll a Rollo to your pal, which is infinitely more interesting than listening to anything by Ms. Fancy Wotsit.

Buy me a pack of Rollos, someone. Or at least share your Rollos.

― Nicole, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I like the Roswell theme song. That's about it.

― Melissa W, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dido neither good nor bad, just there.

― Billy Dods, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes. Yes she is.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

For some reason I really like "Hunter" when it comes on the radio. But I don't think I could ever bring myself to sit down and *choose* to listen to it. Generally turgid beyond belief.

― Robin Carmody, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think Dido is very good in a sarah maclachlan kind of way. She has very good songwriting and even though people say it's too bland and inoffensive, I enjoy studying and eating good food to her. Mmmmmmmmmm perogyyyyyyyy :)

― Aaron, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Very safe and inoffensive (if you don't find "inoffensive" offensive). She sure is good lookin' though, haw haw!

― zither, Wednesday, 21 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"I think Dido is very good in a sarah maclachlan kind of way" - paradox of the day, surely. :)

anyway, what makes Dido worse than bad is the fact that some think her good

― Vic, Thursday, 22 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

two years pass...

i like "white flag"

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 21:36 (twenty-two years ago)

me too

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 4 June 2004 21:41 (twenty-two years ago)

i've never heard a song sung from that precise romantic perspective before. there's something appealing about her expressing such a wacko POV atop such resolutely levelheaded music.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 21:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I've come to the conclusion that her lyrics convey almost total despair/nihilism. Which kinda makes her the Joy Division of coffee table music. I just find that interesting.

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Friday, 4 June 2004 21:44 (twenty-two years ago)

the bridge is really pretty.

and she yodels!

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 21:45 (twenty-two years ago)

and the lyrics are really precise and luminous without being fussy or "poetic"--a hard trick to pull off, really. i have no idea who wrote the song.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 21:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Which kinda makes her the Joy Division of coffee table music.

Haha, this is brilliant. Soccer moms will tear us apart. Unknown pleasures, indeed!

I too like "White Flag", and I believe she wrote the song herself (it's credited to Armstrong/Armstrong/Nowells on AMG, and Armstrong is her last name).

― David A. (Davant), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:09 (twenty-two years ago)

"White Flag" is just a pale reversion of "Thankyou" though, the height of her dizzying abilities.

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:17 (twenty-two years ago)

i really prefer "white flag" to "thank you," though. the sentiment in the latter is pretty banal and unexciting even if there are a few moments of nice observation. also, "white flag" has a nicer melody and doesn't have those irritating zero-7 latin-lite rhythms.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Paying heed to lyrics is rockist. The verses of "Thankyou" I contend are still magickal.

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Not lyrics-wise of course, I meant melodically.

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:30 (twenty-two years ago)

the best opera in english, although purcell's own "king arthur" runs it close

― de, Friday, 4 June 2004 22:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Did that end up in the wrong thread, de, or am I really pissed?

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"Paying heed to lyrics is rockist. "

i'm hoping your tongue was placed somewhere proximate to your cheek there.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

x-post

dido and aeneas, dude.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

"White Flag" was way too close to home last year for me not to enjoy it.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:32 (twenty-two years ago)

x post

*blush*

Yes, my brain is on a go-slow.

Mind, Nixon in China has Purcell any day.

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd hit it.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm earnest re: lyrics.

And what Don sez.

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:44 (twenty-two years ago)

lyrics are a part of music and one can validly take pleasure from them, especially in the not-frequently-well-explained relationship b/t lyrics and music. this has nothing to do with rock or rockism.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 22:47 (twenty-two years ago)

On the flipside, I don't allow banal lyrics (which I'm sure "Thankyou" has) to bother me enjoyment, likes. I do, however, associate attention to lyrics as either very populist or rockist/analytic.

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 23:00 (twenty-two years ago)

yer loss

― amateur!st (amateurist), Friday, 4 June 2004 23:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Lyrics? What are those?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 4 June 2004 23:03 (twenty-two years ago)

x post

Why do you assume "Thank You" has banal lyrics? Presumably for some rockist reason...

― noodle vague (noodle vague), Friday, 4 June 2004 23:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Because it's Dido singing!

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 23:06 (twenty-two years ago)

FWIW I'm a rockist.

― Lazer Guided Mellow Leee (Leee), Friday, 4 June 2004 23:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I have to hear this. I thought "Thank You" was okay. Dido is overhated (on ILM anyway--but Philadelphia loves her).

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 5 June 2004 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

"overhated" is a nice neologism

― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, 5 June 2004 16:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes... I would more say I've been irritated by her stuff than at all angered by it; possibly due to its sheer ubiquity when listening to charts &c. I quite liked the first single off the newest album initially, but for me it paled after so many listens; I just don't feel it is music with any resilience or resonance. It may be my problem but I can't easily disassociate it from the cultural context, i.e. bought as a 'lifestyle' type item by a large demographic. Dido's music is too stylised in its glum, sincere solemnity; there's not enough 'life' or character in it for me. It's not music I can easily imagine people *really loving*.

― Tom May (Tom May), Saturday, 5 June 2004 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

(amateurist, I searched after the fact, and it was used once before. Too obvious, I guess.)

― Rockist Scientist, Saturday, 5 June 2004 16:45 (twenty-two years ago)

it cannot be said often enough: if Heseltine or Hurd had been PM in the 80s, most of Dido's British fans would listen to classical music. she appeals to a demographic which left pop music alone altogether before the doctrine that in doing so one actually interferes with Britain's economic competitiveness took over the middle classes.

which doesn't entirely explain her international success. in the US no doubt her style fits perfectly with adult contemporary radio. in the rest of Europe there have probably been more Wienerite changes than some of our press would have us believe. maybe even her social background counts, especially in the US where "British" is often still associated with "class" ... no, don't be silly, how could it? she has no personality whatsoever and nobody knows who she is, just *that* she is.

no, Dido is popular because more people than ever before like music purely as background (pre-80s, pre-Thatcher, pre-Wiener, in Britain at least a lot of those people ignored popular music altogether, as i've no doubt repeated ad nauseam). she is proof positive for Marcello's argument that one could get more freedom to write what one wants about pop music on a paper run by old-school paternalistic Tories who don't pretend to understand than on one run by liberals of the New Middle Classes who *think* they understand.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Sunday, 6 June 2004 01:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Thank You has a better chorus/melody, but the music for "White Flag" wins out.

Neither are as good as Beth Orton's most Dido-esque songs ("Stolen Car"/"Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine"), though

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Sunday, 6 June 2004 06:56 (twenty-two years ago)

I miss the days when VH1 had "Thank You" on twice an hour overnight. It was extraordinarily comforting at three in the morning.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Sunday, 6 June 2004 06:59 (twenty-two years ago)

robin that was wholly uninteresting! thanks!

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 6 June 2004 19:19 (twenty-two years ago)

also it didn't make sense! :-)

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 6 June 2004 19:20 (twenty-two years ago)

it's contextual. most of my postings are; i've never denied that for many people here they are written in code.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Sunday, 6 June 2004 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

does your blog site supply a codebreaker? or can i get one of those decoder rings for it?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 6 June 2004 22:25 (twenty-two years ago)

nope. most of us here have had experiences that others here haven't had. that is really all it is.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Sunday, 6 June 2004 22:27 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.ftmeade.army.mil/SoundOFF/archives/SO2003/Jan%2023/images/WE2WISH.jpg

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 6 June 2004 22:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't see what there is not to understand in Robin's post, though I am very familiar with his writings admittedly.

The crux is clearly: 'no, Dido is popular because more people than ever before like music purely as background'. And around this, Robin weaves his socio-cultural observations; I do think they're relevant too, as a way of looking at what Dido represents.

― Tom May (Tom May), Sunday, 6 June 2004 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)

i think he is making a lot of dubious leaps as always. also he has nothing to say about dido's music. does robin even listen to music or just make a big collage out of the music and politics sections of the guardian?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 6 June 2004 23:49 (twenty-two years ago)

also "home psychology" journals are in there somewhere.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Sunday, 6 June 2004 23:50 (twenty-two years ago)

": 'no, Dido is popular because more people than ever before like music purely as background'."

this doesn't explain why i like "white flag" interestingly.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 7 June 2004 00:01 (twenty-two years ago)

i have nothing to say about Dido's music because there *is* nothing to say about it; it is so featureless that one might as well post about the shape of the clouds, and probably be more interesting while doing so. i listen to music all the time; i write about music *when it is interesting*, which is often. when it comes to music that i don't find interesting and that i only hear on the radio rather than listen to out of my own choice, i will occasionally comment on the wider sociological aspects of that music because they might (as in this case because it relates to my wider interest in how the middle classes have changed as a result of Thatcherism) interest me.

sometimes of course i'll have no interest in the music or in any background elements, then i won't write about it at all. when i'm listening to Kanye West of course i'm aware of the social context but the music is so fucking great that i can appreciate it for and of itself. it is just that i have, perhaps, less of a bounded mind than some people.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 7 June 2004 00:02 (twenty-two years ago)

so why do you like "White Flag" then? personally i find it very hard to imagine anyone listening to it other than as background. i can't imagine anyone *absorbing* the thing ...

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Monday, 7 June 2004 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I like "White Flag" because it was ubiquitous at the time I'd split up with my girlfriend, and the lyrics were scarily appropriate to the situation we were in. My girlfriend, on the other hand, fucking hated it because it was too close to home. Now you can call me a sap or shout me out for having an emotional connection to a piece of 'background' music that has little or no artistic worth or whatever, but I would hope that the fact that I had a very strong emotional reaction to this song is worth something, somehow, even if I'm happy never to hear it again. The fact remains that there's something about the way Dido sings the phrase "and I'm sure we will", some sense of falling resignation, that I find incredibly compelling.

As for what Robin was saying, while I personally am not keen on his style (sorry Robin, no hard feelings etcetera), often finding the leaps and references absurd or impenetrable, in this case it's pretty easy to see that he's saying 80s Toryism caused a social paradigm shift in terms of what the 'middle' classes listened to as background music, away from classical and towards pop. Whether this is true or not I'm dubious about (I think working class people are just as likely to listen to background music as anyone else, although maybe not; perhaps there's some correlation between listening to background music while you work on something else in your leisure time, and listening in an involved way and doing nothing else in your leisure time, and success? i.e. Dido + out-of-hours business venture = mo' money : Ludacris + prolonged engagement with lyrics/music/culture = less money?!).

Personally I think Brian Eno has more to do with this phenomenon, if it is a phenomenon, than Thatcher.

Those "White Flag" lyrics in full, eh?

I know you think that I shouldn't still love you
I'll tell you that
But if I didn't say it
Well, I'd still have felt it
Where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess
And destruction to come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of 'It's over'
Then I'm sure that that makes sense

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

And when we meet
As I'm sure we will
All that was then
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Monday, 7 June 2004 06:57 (twenty-two years ago)

"Whether this is true or not I'm dubious about "

well yes, there are lots of rhetorically daring arguments that happen to be total BS, that was kind of my point.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 7 June 2004 17:24 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

I think you all are nuts for saying Dido music is unappealing. She has a style and a flair for writing muisic and has a very nice voice.

― Kepaly, Monday, 24 April 2006 19:40 (twenty years ago)

three months pass...

the 5 top-selling albums of the last ten years in the UK:

1. dido - no angel
2. james blunt - back to bedlam
3. david gray - white ladder
4. dido - life for rent
5. the beatles - #1

as reported on DS

not sure where a full list is being published.

― Konal Doddz (blueski), Thursday, 17 August 2006 12:54 (nineteen years ago)

her voice is flat and extremely limited. the songs lack punch.

― Charlie Howard (the sphinx), Thursday, 17 August 2006 13:11 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

"White Flag" is the joint.

― Dom Passantino, Saturday, 13 October 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

For music so frequently called walpaper, White Flag was very conspicuous.

― I know, right?, Saturday, 13 October 2007 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

I really like White Flag and Here With Me. The lyrics on her big hits are creepily codependent to the point where there's no way I'd put them on a mixtape for anyone.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Saturday, 13 October 2007 20:59 (eighteen years ago)

I once had to correct someone when he attributed "White Flag" to Sade.

― The Reverend, Saturday, 13 October 2007 21:01 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

New album 'Safe Trip Home' tends even more than previous efforts towards the 'cafe bland' style but the 8mins 55 secs of Northern Skies is actually kinda great.

― Live from the Witch Trials (SeekAltRoute), Tuesday, 11 November 2008 02:38 (seventeen years ago)

three months pass...

"White Flag" is the joint.

― Dom Passantino, Saturday, 13 October 2007 20:49 (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― The Ice Cr?m man is coming (The stickman from the hilarious xkcd comics), Sunday, 1 March 2009 23:22 (seventeen years ago)

dido vs diplo

― and what, Sunday, 1 March 2009 23:27 (seventeen years ago)

Dido did more for hip-hop

― The Ice Cr?m man is coming (The stickman from the hilarious xkcd comics), Sunday, 1 March 2009 23:27 (seventeen years ago)

I think you're confusing her with Beth Orton Gareth

they're different people??

― gareth, Wednesday, November 21, 2001 2:00 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what a character

― Judd Nelson (special guest stars mark bronson), Sunday, 1 March 2009 23:44 (seventeen years ago)

Suggest ban him.

― The Ice Cr?m man is coming (The stickman from the hilarious xkcd comics), Sunday, 1 March 2009 23:45 (seventeen years ago)

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