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Life For Rent - Dido

 

Released: 2003

Label: Arista

When I bought: 2003

See, I *told* you this would be every record I own picked at random by my daughter. Otherwise, in the name of credibility, I might have conveniently forgotten to include this record. 

Look, I've always been a pop music fan. I grew up with three sisters, and a father who thinks Pete Waterman is a musical genius. Pure pop was always part of my musical palette. So yes, there are pop albums in my collection.

It's easy to forget just how huge Dido was. Around 2003/2004 she was, for a time, the biggest pop singer in the UK. Her debut album was the second biggest selling record of the 2000s, and follow-up 'Life For Rent', is seventh on that list.

I bought this album in 2003. I have strong memories of listening to it when I was briefly at University of Glamorgan studying English. I dropped out after a few months, partly because I was going a bit mad, and partly because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but being in a small university on the side of a hill in South Wales definitely wasn't part of the plan.

Anyway, I suppose I should actually write about the album.

The whole thing is drenched with long drawn-out synth chords, swelling strings and uplifting chord changes.

It is an album designed to soundtrack nights of pining for the one that got away - those nights where you simultaneously believe you'll never love again and you also vow to start your life afresh the next day. 

It's basically the musical equivalent of a Bridget Jones film. 

'White Flag' was the big hit, although I think the title track is better. 

I get that Dido's voice is a bit divisive, and she's never going to run up and down the octaves like Beyonce, or convey attitude like Amy Winehouse, but there are time when her slightly broken delivery really works, such as on the chorus of 'Don't Leave Home'.

Some of the songs are a bit too beige - 'This Land Is Mine', 'Stoned', and 'Who Makes You Feel' the chief culprits.

Album closer 'See The Sun' is a lovely ode to getting a friend back into the world after they've lost a love, and the album even has that oh-so-very-CD trick of a hidden track at the end.

Does this album do anything that many, many others haven't done before or since? Not really. But sometimes that doesn't matter. Life is cyclical. People will always fall in love, fall out of love, have holiday romances, need to drag a friend out of the doldrums.

In the early noughties, Dido was the soundtrack to all that. 

7/10



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