When Dido first appeared on the music scene, little was known about her. Contrary to popular belief, Eminem was not the first who discovered her talents when he sampled her "Thank You" on his song "Stan." When she released her first solo album, No Angel, the hit single "Here With Me" catapulted her to the top of the charts worldwide. What only a few people know is that "Thank You" saw the light of day even earlier—it was featured in the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors.
     Dido is hardly a newcomer in the music scene. Her brother, Rollo Armstrong, is the mastermind of the famous British band Faithless, and Dido has been playing music ever since she was 5, growing up with piano and violin lessons and trying to compose music from an early age. Dido's voice was heard on Faithless' hit "Salva Mea" and she toured with the band to support the album Reverence, but the group's success didn't bring her any fame. For that she had to wait for the release of No Angel.
     After selling 12 million units of her debut, which was the world's highest-selling album in 2001, Dido released Life For Rent. Critics claim that her songs and voice are hardly thrilling, but it still strikes a chord in most listeners. While her new album has all the basic qualities of her massive debut, everything from production to songwriting is refined to the tiniest detail. While some might call it easy listening, it is certainly laid back and melodic, which makes it perfect for cold autumn days, when you're looking outside of your window and just feel that tad of melancholia creeping up.
     What is most surprising about Life For Rent is the fact that Dido seems to get rather personal—surprising from somebody who is quite shy, gives as few interviews as possible, and refuses to talk about her personal life. Part of this change was the split with her fiancé, Bob, which played a big part in her songwriting.
     "Of course the breakup was quite sad and it makes quite a change if you're separated from your partner," she says. "But I tried not to let it influence the album too much, because I hate it if people wallow in their own misery and think they're cool just because they're depressed. The older you get, the more you realize you're drifting toward a direction, and sometimes your significant other drifts into an opposite direction. You can't blame anybody for it. It's just something that happens; you grow apart."
     Despite being single now, she's hardly sad and confesses that she enjoys her new life. "I really enjoy being single again. I spent a lot of time in a relationship and the nearer we came to the end, the more difficult it got. You don't see things clearly as long as you're still involved. I think it was stupid that we got engaged, seeing it in retrospective, but hindsight is always 20/20 vision. Now I see that it was more like a desperate effort to try and save the relationship. It was doomed to fail from the start, but as I already said, once you're in a situation, you don't see as clearly as if you're looking in from the outside. But despite the fact that I'm single and I like to have fun, I'm not really wild. I just like the feeling of being independent again."
     Dido consoles herself with the thought that women reach their peak in their 30s and that she's in the prime of her life. "Thirty is not an age for a woman anymore. A few decades back, you were a matron when you were in your 30s, or a spinster if you weren't married, but now we know that we're in our peak, we know what we want and we're not afraid to go out and get it. I like being a strong, independent woman, and to be honest, I was never afraid to be on my own. At school I was pretty sociable, but I did like to come home and be on my own and make music and write my dreams down."
     Dido—born Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong in London on December 25, 1971, but nicknamed after the queen of Carthage—grew up as the daughter of a literary agent and a poet mother and discovered music and books at an early age. She attributes it to the fact that her parents thought it would be better if the children grew up without television. She was sent to the Guildhall School of Music to be brought up as a classical musician, but fate—first in the form of her brother, Rollo, then in the shape of Eminem—changed things. Dido used to hang out in the studio with Rollo while he put the first Faithless album together and hoped he would ask her to sing. When one day the scheduled vocalist didn't show up, she finally got the chance to sing professionally. After seeing Dido perform with Faithless, Clive Davis offered her a solo deal and the rest is history.
     While the album title Life For Rent might sound somewhat depressing, for Dido it's everything else. "I think a lot of people misunderstand the title until they hear the song," she says. "Life for rent means that my life isn't really my own, I only rented it for a while, but if I don't manage to buy it, to own it, then nothing of what I think is mine is really mine. It's about taking control of your life, sort of making your own decisions and not just relying on destiny. For me, it was really important to write that song. It's very personal and it deals with what I expect from life and what I've learned about it in the past two years. I wanted to call the album %Life For Rent% because it was important to me. I wanted to have a reminder of what I had learned, a reminder to keep on living my life and not just go away and be distant. Sometimes it's far too easy to do that."
     She admits that, especially as a celebrity, it is tempting to run away because it becomes draining to be in the public eye. "I know a lot of people who feel like I do. It seems to be so easy to get lethargic about it and just let things slide. Sometimes I quite enjoy just disappearing for a while, doing crazy little trips. It's great to just disappear, grab a suitcase, switch the answering machine on and just go somewhere else. It's great to go on your own and discover new things just for yourself, to meet new people and all that. If you're all on your own, then there is nobody there to guide you and you have to make all the decisions for yourself. It's quite liberating in a way."