Review of Dido (As a Person)

Do you love Dido like I love Dido? I sure as heck hope so! Because since 1999’s smash hit Thank You, Dido’s sweet voice, soft acoustic guitar, and slick electronic production has been the world’s metaphorical shoulder to cry on, comforting its lost souls. On nights when I’m anxious, I get in my car, turn on a Dido album, and drive. I go wherever she takes me! I call these my ‘Dido drives to calm down’.

Unfortunately, a recent thought has interfered with the calming effect of my Dido drives to calm down. The thought is as follows: the second verse of 2003’s smash hit White Flag starts with the lyrics, “I know I left too much mess and destruction to come back again”. First of all, I know Dido is human, and humans make mistakes. In some ways (or all ways) the very fact that Dido displays humanity makes her the perfect shoulder to cry on. Because then we can cry together!

But when I was on one of my Alanis Morisette drives where I know I’m right and someone else is wrong, and I need to yell, I was listening to Alanis' 1995 anthem for jilted lovers You Oughta Know. She says, ‘It’s not fair to remind me of the mess you left when you went away’. I had to be like, “stop the record!” Alanis is talking to someone who left a “mess” when they “went away”, and Dido is admitting that she left such a “mess” that now she can’t “come back again”! Talk about an eerie coincidence! Only what if their similar diction is no coincidence? Here’s what I think: Dido did something horrible to Alanis. Alanis wrote the raw, emotional You Oughta Know in 1995. Then eight years later, in 2003, Dido apologized using White Flag. That’s a delayed apology, ma’am!

When a friend has done something bad to a stranger, I believe it is my job to help my friend become a better person. But if a friend (Dido) has done something terrible to someone else I love (Alanis), that influences how safe I feel crying on the shoulder of that friend. I’m forced to pick sides! Ergot my Dido drives to calm down have become less calming.

You may be thinking, ‘all of this happened over 20 years ago. So what? They probably get along famously these days’. First of all, I haven’t found any evidence that they’ve even interacted since either song was released. Or before the songs were released! Furthermore, I’m not convinced Dido’s terrors have ended! In 2017, Jamila Woods released an exquisite album called HEAVN. I enjoyed it immensely. But then I heard the twelfth track, called Emerald Street. The song opens with seemingly innocuous scatting—until you notice what’s being said. The innocuous syllables form very specifically chosen words! Those words say, “Die Dido, Dido Die”. It sounds to me like Jamila Woods wishes for Dido to die. Why though???

The fourteenth song on HEAVN is an interlude called Always Loving because Jamila Woods is almost always loving. But remember "Die Dido...". Clearly not 100% unequivocally always loving! Why the exception for Dido? I do not have an answer, but one thing I know is that my Dido drives to calm down are ruined. A shoulder to cry on, Dido is no more.