Random Dido Pictures

Some random Dido pictures that were taken from www.fordidofans.net

DON'T BELIEVE IN LOVE - DIDO

YES IT IS NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE :D

New Dido Music Found

If you go on Dido's Myspace page and you listen to her music, you have a choice of albums to listen to. I would highly recommend listening to the 2nd album It's called "Dance Vault Mixes - Sand In My Shoes". It's available here.
Also did you know that you can listen to most of her songs on MySpace & YouTube!

DIDO NEWS: Interview on TV & So on

Hello again. Several new interviews with Dido have appeared online over the last few days, which we thought you folks might like to check out. Click on the links below to read them...

- BBC News (UK)
- Herald Sun (Australia)
- Sky News (UK)

That last one also features a video chat with Dido.

Note: One of the links may have stopped working so I cannot fix it. Don't ask me why that happened!

Dido: Queen Of The Road

Dido is Britain's most successful female artist ever, yet is releasing only her third album since her 1999 breakthrough. She tells Sheryl Garratt about the physical and emotional journeys that have brought her this far. Photographs by Kayt Jones

It's 6.30pm on an autumn evening in Los Angeles, and Dido is driving down Santa Monica Boulevard facing right into the setting sun. The glare is blinding and she cheerfully admits she can barely see, which is worrying because when he said goodbye earlier, her manager, Peter Leak, had made some pointed quips about her eccentric 'jazz driving'.

Telegraph Music homepage 'It's always like this when the sun is going down,' she says, squinting through the windscreen. 'Earlier this year I got a bicycle. What I was thinking, I have no idea. I'd cycle along the road parallel to this, and no one could see me coming. It was like being on a rollercoaster!'

She seems very much at home in LA, so much so that I had assumed that she had moved here. She has lived here, on and off, since coming to do some writing with the producer Jon Brion in 2005, and this is where she has ended up writing and recording most of her long-awaited third album, Safe Trip Home. But it turns out that the Lexus utility vehicle she is driving is a rental, as is her house in West Hollywood, and her roots are still in Islington where she grew up.

'London is still where all my stuff is, where I feel at home,' she explains. 'I'm just really enjoying working here. Los Angeles is a city built on storytelling, on imagination and ideas. And after a while you start soaking that up. It's very easy to get into a headspace that's good for writing. There's a lot to look at, a lot of emotional stuff going on. I've felt so creative and so confident here, but this isn't somewhere I would set up shop permanently. It's a great city, but you need to be able to leave it.'

Earlier that evening, I had watched her rehearse in a cramped but cosy studio space in West Hollywood kept by her guitarist, Joel Shearer. With the album finished, Dido is in that delicate transition period when songs that were private are starting to become public, and when she will soon have to take music created in the closed world of the recording studio out to live audiences.

'Which is always a shocker for me!' she says. 'I still forget that anyone's actually going to hear it while I'm writing songs. It just becomes a relationship between you and the music, you and the emotion. You're not thinking at that point, you're not even filtering yourself - you're not having to, because it's just you sitting on your own in the kitchen. If I did think about the eventual audience, I don't think I could do it.'

Right now she is easing into it all gently, playing with just Shearer and the percussionist Brendan Buckley. She seems relaxed, happy, totally in charge as she swaps from piano to guitar to recorder and confidently runs through four songs from the new album in that pure, clear voice. When she sings the hauntingly beautiful Grafton Street, about the death of her father in 2006, I find myself blinking away tears.

'We had a good day today,' she smiles as they pack up for the weekend, adding that they had even learnt a new song, one she might include on her fourth album. She's on a creative roll at the moment, writing so prolifically that she's reluctant to stop. The album was originally due to come out at the start of 2008, but she ended up delaying it to add some new tracks, and now she is collecting songs for the follow-up before the ideas get lost in the whirlwind of promotion and touring. 'I know that if I break this run, it's not going to happen like this again,' she says. 'I just became oblivious to the outside world and got into writing.'

One of her great strengths, as a songwriter and as a performer, is her ability to make what feels like a direct, emotional connection with the listener. This is perhaps not so hard today, when she's playing to an audience consisting of me and her manager, but she also pulls it off on a far grander scale. Sales of her first two albums now total some 22 million, making her the most successful female artist ever to come out of Britain. Which is surprising, since all she set out to do, in the beginning, was record a low-key chill-out album.

Dido recorded No Angel for her older brother Rollo's independent dance label, Cheeky, signing with him in Britain, and Arista for the rest of the world. But when Rollo decided he wasn't cut out to be a record executive - he is primarily a producer, as well as being a key member of the dance group Faithless - and began negotiations to sell out to Arista, Dido's album was delayed. Released in the States in the summer of 1999, it didn't come out in Britain until early 2001. With little else to do, she went to the States and did the kind of promotion few British acts are willing to do, criss-crossing the country to do radio interviews, meet-and-greets of sales teams, and gigs in tiny venues for 18 exhausting months. There was never any grand plan, she says. 'I sort of set off and just kept going. It was always, "Well, just do this one thing more", and then this one other thing more.'

Each week, the album sold a little more than the week before, and when one of the tracks was chosen as the theme music for the cult sci-fi tele­vision series Roswell High, sales finally passed the million mark. Shortly afterwards, Eminem sampled her sweet love song Thank You and twisted it into a tale of warped obsession on his single Stan towards the end of 2000, and Dido became a worldwide phenomenon.

With her sometimes deceptively gentle, beautifully crafted songs, Dido is now one of the few British acts - Coldplay being the other big one - to make a substantial impact on the US charts. Yet when we sit down in a busy health food restaurant to talk after her rehearsal, no one appears to recognise her. Wearing her blond hair scraped back into a ponytail, ripped jeans and an off-the-shoulder white T-shirt, she looks younger than her 36 years, and not at all conspicuous. Only the rather lovely Miu Miu handbag at her feet hints at what must, by now, be a very healthy bank balance. But some time ago Dido worked out what makes her happy, and it isn't buying lots of stuff, or surrounding herself with too much clutter or complication. It is, simply, making and playing music. 'I love what I do, and I feel very confident as a songwriter,' she says. 'In so many other things in life I'm just so awkward and clumsy. I'm lost! I have moments when I can talk clearly, and moments when I just can't.'

Music is her way of expressing herself, of interacting with the world. It calms her. 'If I'm frightened, or I'm really stressed, I'll find myself humming and singing,' she says. 'There was an earthquake here recently, and my house is quite tall and wooden, and I felt like it was going to fall. Then I found myself starting a little song, and I immediately calmed down.'When Dido first came to LA, she stayed in a big house up in the Hollywood Hills. She had a bed, a piano and one bag of clothes. After injuring herself on a trip to Mexico - she is notoriously accident-prone - and finding it hard to walk, she bought herself a drum-kit as a way of staying active. 'I was just sitting on the sofa, and I'm not good if I'm not moving,' she says. 'So I thought it might be nice to hit things. And then I got obsessed, and would just play along with my iPod. It became a really good writing tool. If I'm writing on the guitar I'll move to the piano if I get a bit stuck, and now I can take it to the drums as well. Which can sometimes free up a part of your brain. Drumming is great for that, it just lets something go. God knows how it sounds, but I don't care. I just enjoy doing it.'his spartan existence - just her, the piano, the drums and the bag - continued for more than a year. She loved the simplicity of it, she says. The views were great from her house in the hills, and with no near neighbours she could make as much noise as she liked. 'But it felt weird up there, full of people who don't talk to each other. So now I've moved my bag to a smaller place where I've got neighbours, and it's really nice.'

The new house is tiny, she adds. Which is just as she likes it. 'It's perfect,' she says. 'Everything is within arm's reach, so I can just write a song and I don't have to worry about moving stuff to another room or anything. I like things simple, and I actually get quite tense if I've got too many things around me. You work these things out about yourself as you get older. And what am I going to write songs about if I'm rambling around in a big old mansion?'

Success came late for Dido. She was almost 30 when the big cheques began to come in from No Angel, and as a result she perhaps has a more balanced approach to it all. 'God knows what would have happened if all this had happened to me when I was 19,' she laughs. 'I was an absolute mess! But now, you've established your life, you know what you love doing, and it's very important to me - for songwriting - to not disturb that equilibrium.'

So although her place in Islington is lovely, it is not palatial. One of the great pleasures of success is being able to look after people close to her, and it has also enabled her to quietly put money behind one of her passions: education, especially for girls, funding schools in the developing world via Oxfam. When I ask what her indulgences are, she says buying musical instruments, mainly. And a season ticket to her beloved Arsenal, although she hasn't been able to see many matches recently. 'Someone else has been borrowing it. I last used it in April.'

She enjoys clothes, but she rarely goes out to buy them. 'I'm quite lazy about what I wear. It just feels like life's too short, and there are certain things I just can't be bothered with - like getting dressed up, and going shopping.' The only time she has been into a shop in LA this year was to buy her assistant a birthday present. 'I hate it,' she shrugs. 'I find it a very hostile environment.'

She has the luxury, she adds, of not having to think about money. There's an enormous freedom in that, and she feels very lucky. 'But I don't feel the need to do anything wildly different from how I've always done it.'

Fame seems of no interest to her, either. She is rarely seen at awards ceremonies, premieres or industry back-slapping events, and with just a few exceptions - such as the paparazzi trying to get into the hospital when her father was ill - she has sidestepped becoming yet another character in the tabloids' celebrity soap opera. She has been lucky to be left alone, she says, and she hopes to keep it that way. So when I later ask if she is still single, she just smiles and says she has strict boundaries now, and avoids talking about her personal life. 'But - I'm very happy.'

We first met in 2001, just as No Angel was breaking big, and she seems to have changed very little: she's more confident, more self-assured, but then she's also seven years older. 'There's a confidence that comes with that,' she agrees. 'You accept certain things about yourself - like I'm never going to be Christy Turlington, and that's OK! I like being a woman, and I haven't reached a point yet where I feel negative about getting older - my life has only got better. I'm sure there is a point where you start coming down the other side of the mountain, but I can look back now on all sorts of stuff - even interviews - and see that old uncertainty, and realise I don't feel that any more.'

Dido's background is often described, somewhat snottily, as privileged. She grew up in a big, book-filled house in north London, and her early aptitude for music was encouraged with lessons at the Guildhall School of Music. Her father, William Armstrong, headed the publishing house Sidgwick & Jackson for 25 years until illness forced an early retirement in 1995, building up an extraordinarily varied list from serious history tomes to early bonkbusters and memoirs from the likes of Reg and Ron Kray, Bob Geldof and Boy George. Her mother, Clare, is a somewhat eccentric poet who often acted more like a friend than a parent.

Dido and Rollo, now 42, grew up without the kind of consistent boundaries and routines children often need. There were rules, but they tended to be arbitrary. They could come and go as they pleased, and in her teens Dido would disappear for days on end without comment, only to be shouted at for not wearing her slippers in the house. Everything about her family seemed different: they had no TV, no stereo, and no visitors. Clare shared her daughter's aversion to shopping, so the children's clothes were always oddly mismatched, while their packed lunches at school would be dried banana chips or leftover ratatouille rather than the nice white-bread sandwiches and Penguin bars everyone else seemed to have.

And then, of course, there were their names. Dido was named after the Queen of Carthage mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid, which you would think would be burden enough. (When meeting new people, she often tried to pretend she was called Clare or Chloe.) But her birth certificate, famously, lists her glorious full name as Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong. Now, both siblings can see that there were advantages to their unorthodox upbringing, and they wonder if either of them would be as creative without it. But when they were younger and desperate to fit in, it must have been tough. 'We've always striven to be… normal,' Dido told me in 2001.

An intense, self-contained child who often practised on her recorder, piano and violin for six or seven hours a day, she went off the rails as a teenager. She became a Goth, got into fights, and scraped through her A-levels with such a lack of commitment that her parents refused to fund her through university. So she left home and got a job as a waitress, then followed the advice of one of her father's authors, Shirley Conran, and went to secretarial school. Afterwards she worked in publishing, and by the mid-1990s she was studying for a law degree at night but also hanging round the studio while Faithless made their first album, Reverence. Rollo, who had already enjoyed a string of one-off dance hits at this point, discouraged her musical ambitions, feeling luck could not hit the same family twice, but she persisted and was finally allowed to sing on a couple of tracks. She has contributed a guest vocal on every Faithless album since, while Rollo has helped out on hers.

Although just over half of Safe Trip Home was recorded with Jon Brion (a producer and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with left-field artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann), her brother came out to LA this summer with his partner and their two young sons, and Dido says it was almost like the old days: Faithless worked on their new album in the studio while she worked on songs in the programming room, then Rollo and Sister Bliss, the main musician in Faithless, pitched in on her tracks.

Dido rarely talks about her lyrics, saying it stops people interpreting songs for themselves, and also that it would stop her writing freely if she felt she would have to explain it. Some of the lyrics have always been Rollo's, she points out, and not all of her songs are about her life. 'Obviously you're going to use your own emotional experiences, but I'm not trying to diarise my life through music. I've no desire to do that whatsoever.'

She does, however, say that her father's death, at the age of 68, after a long struggle with the auto-immune disease lupus, has influenced some of the new songs, especially Grafton Street, on which Dido plays the first instrument she ever learnt, the recorder.

'I'm proud that Rollo and I managed to do something that is a really lovely tribute to Dad,' she says quietly. 'That song still really moves me. And I'm so glad I put the recorder on it. At the time I thought, "Oh God, I can't believe I'm doing this!" But I didn't care what anyone thought of the song, I just wanted to make it. Dad is so much responsible for the way I am, and for me being creative. His way of telling us bedtime stories was to sing all his Irish songs, and you could hear him coming a mile off in the car with his overly loud Irish music. I loved it, and I know that was instilled into me. He always supported anything creative we've done, and there was never any pressure. He was just immensely, immensely proud.'

Before finishing her second album, Life For Rent, in 2003, Dido separated from her partner of seven years, Bob Page, a music industry lawyer. After touring to promote the record, she travelled alone to places such as Thailand, Canada and Ireland, revelling in her new freedoms. At the time she talked excitedly about having adventures, of trying new things like snowboarding and parachuting, but when her father's health deteriorated she headed back home.

'I've been remarkably rooted in wherever I am for the last years, and part of that was because of Dad. I just wanted to be with him when I was in London. I'd go to see him every morning and every evening, and I had just no desire to go anywhere else. I knew if I did, I just wouldn't enjoy myself anyway. And I really enjoyed that time we had, actually. Loved it.'

I wonder if she went back to the adventures afterwards, but she says she feels less restless, immersed in her work. Her explorations are different now. She has been mastering the technical side of studio work, and can now record her own songs on to her laptop, at home. One song on the album, Quiet Times, was recorded this way, with her playing everything, including the drums. She never did go sky-diving.

'People kept putting me off.Nobody seems to want me to jump out of a plane! Not with my record for clumsiness. A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to learn to fly. Because you can do it here, and I just thought it would be amazing. And everyone was just like, "No! Not with your driving skills!"'

She's not that bad a driver, she huffs, saying that it's hard to avoid accidents in LA. 'People just come bumping into you. You'll be sitting at a traffic light, and bang! It's extraordinary here, there's a lot of people in their cars multi-tasking - putting lipstick on while talking on the phone.'

When she first came to the city, she would drive around at night, listening to Turin Brakes and Citizen Cope, or the string arrangements on Randy Newman and Nilsson. Later, she would go on longer road trips to Kings Canyon in the Sierra Nevada mountains, to the Yosemite National Park, driving alone across the desert for hours on end playing Brian Eno's pioneering ambient exploration Another Green World.

'Eno definitely works in the desert, at sunset,' she says. 'Music is an emotional thing for me - I'm not someone who has it on in the background. That's why I like listening when I'm driving. Because I want to listen. It transports you.'

She ended up working with Eno and Cope on the new album, which also boasts some gorgeously lush string arrangements. But mainly, on these trips, she's catching up on music she missed, growing up without a stereo. From classic disco to singer-songwriters such as James Taylor and Carole King, there's always something else to discover. 'The thing I love about music is I'm never going to have to stop learning. There's just so much,' she enthuses.

Talk to Dido for long, and you will notice that the word 'learning' comes up a lot. Last year she started taking English classes at UCLA. She never did complete her law course, but she is now thinking about enrolling to do an English degree.

'It was really fun,' she says of the night classes she took at UCLA while making her album. 'I'd leave the studio early evening, go off and do this quite intense class, and I'd come back and I'd just be on fire! I did it purely to enjoy it and learn. We were doing mythology - I even had to read most of the Bible, which was bizarre. But it was fascinating, and I'd like to do more. Do that, do gigs, write songs and record… that's my ideal life, and that's what I'm heading for.'

BOTTOM IN YA FACE

Announcement:

Expect updates on Wednesday the 29th of October 2008. There will be NO updates on Friday the 31st of October 2008. Since I will be busy on Halloween :)
Also expect some Dido updates during the weekend.
The comments from this post will be disabled!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

THE MONSTER MASH

MORE DIDO NEWS:

We're pleased to announce that 11 short films are being produced to accompany the release of Dido’s third studio album, Safe Trip Home.

Based thematically around the concept of home, these shorts feature stories of hope, love, commitment and longing, from around the globe, a dump site in Rio, a Mumbai taxi-cab, the rugged coast of New Zealand's South Island, a Thai boxing ring and a picturesque Portuguese fishing village.

Watch the first four films at www.safetriphome.com now. Choose a location and then begin navigating your way through the films that are housed around the globe. You can then document how each film has made you feel by choosing a response from the colour palette.

Once logged in your journey will be mapped to your own personal path around the globe. You can then share your path with friends.

"I wanted every song to have its own video or film to represent the album as a whole," explains Dido. "I love seeing how someone else might interpret a song that is so specific and personal to me. It's an experiment I've been really enjoying, watching the songs be turned on their heads by these beautiful emotional visual stories that are coming out of it."

Dido asked various film directors in specific countries around the world to create pieces based on their idea of what home means to them, using a chosen song from the album for inspiration. The resulting films have so far been made in Brazil, New Zealand, Thailand, England, Scotland, India, Portugal, France and the US.

Internationally renowned photographer and filmmaker Marcos Prado based Us 2 Little Gods on the award-winning feature documentary Estamira he made in 2006. This film tells the story of an elderly woman who has made her home in a waste site in Rio de Janeiro.

“Estamira is an extraordinary woman that lived and worked for twenty years at the Waste Disposal Site of Jardim Gramacho," says Marcos. " I wanted to show the amazing relationship of love, care and friendship Estamira and her friends shared in that odd place they called 'home'.”

Brazilian director Cristiana Miranda used The Day Before The Day to portray a day in the life of a young fisherman from a seaside village in Portugal.

“Fishermen leave their homes every day before dawn to travel to their other home: the sea," says Cristiana. "The home they leave behind is where they sleep and eat and take care of their families, the home they go to is the home they respect and admire. They cannot live without both.”


This has been taken from Dido's Site :)

DIDO UPDATE - Latest News:

Yes Dido has finally released her first single "Don't Believe In Love". It is now available worldwide EXCEPT Dubai. Don't ask why it's not out in Dubai. It's complicated. But in other news here's what she quoted from her site:

"Dido's new single, Don't Believe In Love, is out today. If you'd like to buy the CD single, click here to get it from HMV.com for £1.99 (with free delivery). Or, if you'd like to download it from iTunes, click here."

Any more questions? Comment on this Post!

DIDO UPDATE: NEW SONG FOUND

Dido's Lithuanian Fan Site has just revealed a new song. This time it's the full version of "Let's do the things we normally do". Video revealed bellow. Lyrics coming up next!




Also you can now hear the following tracks:
You can hear in full length following tracks:

Don't Believe In Love
Let's Do the Things We Normally Do
Us 2 Little God
Look No Further!

Jokes

Q. Do you know the true reason for all of these blonde jokes?
A. Brunettes and redheads think they look smart making them all up!

Q. What do you call a brunette between two blondes???
A. LUCKY! (She finally gets some attention!)
Q. What's black and blue and lying in a ditch?
A. A Redhead who has told one too many dumb blonde jokes.
Q. What does a redhead miss the most at a party?
A. The Invitation !
Q. Why are there so many blonde jokes?
A. Because the blondes are out with all the men, the brunettes and redheads have nothing better to do on Friday and Saturday nights.

SMART BLONDE JOKE

A blonde walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the Loan officer. She says she's going to Europe on business for two weeks andNeeds to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for the loan, so the blonde hands over the keys to a new Mercedes Benz SL 500.

The car is parked on the street in front of the bank, she has the title and everything checks out. The bank agrees to accept the car collateral for the loan.

The bank's president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the blond for using a $110,000 Benz as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank then proceeds to drive the Benz into the bank's underground garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the blonde returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41.

The loan officer says, "Miss, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire.

What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?"

The blonde replies, "Where else in New York City can I park my Car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?"

Finally... a smart blonde joke.



There were two blondes, and they had just came from a store.

The blonde that owned the mustang had locked her keys in the car. She was trying to pick the lock when she stoped to rest for a second.
When she sat down, her friend said, "Hurry up, it's starting to rain and the top's down!"

---

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Updates:

The following things have been added on to my blog:

• New Links
• The News section
• A little test saying what the following weeks are
• Subscribe to my blog
• Follow My Blog
• Email
  

The email is retrotrut.dxb_4_life@blogger.com Click here to email me!

Announcement:

Unfortunately with great regret people. I would like to regret that I have just formatted my computer and I will not be updating my blog for the next few days. So please be aware that I will try and update my blog soon. But at the moment I am busy multi-tasking again. Seriously, I am installing some things back on to my computer and at the same time I'm studying for my freaking midterms. These midterms are going to be on Psychology & English. They are on the 28th & the 29th of October 2008. Please with me luck. I need it.

Also I would like to announce that 90210 will resume this week on Wednesday the 29th of October 2008. And Heroes Season 3 Episode 7 will be on Tuesday the 28th of October 2008!

Wish that Dido would come to DXB

Don't we all wish that someday Dido would actually come to Dubai? Who here thinks that Dido should come to Dubai? Please comment down below!

Colgate Advertisement:

Ever thought Dido would be in a real advertisement for colgate? Well you're wrong. This has been photoshopped on Dido's Forums!

Dido on a German Radio Station

Dido was a guest on German radio station Bayern 3 this week. Click here to listen to her interview (which she gave in English) on the station's website now.

The picture was taken from her site :)

New Radars in Dubai

You Have Been Warned about the RADARS!

Natasha Bedingfield- Single Lyrics & Video

Ah yeah that's right
All you single people out there
This is for you
Yeah

I'm not waiting around for a man to save me
('Cos I'm happy where I am)
Don't depend on a guy to validate me
(No no)
I don't need to be anyone's baby
(Is that so hard to understand?)
No I don't need another half to make me... whole

Make your move if you want
Doesn't mean I will or won't
I'm free to make my mind up
You either got it or you don't

[Chorus:]
This is my current single status
My declaration of independence
There's no way I'm trading places
Right now a star's in the ascendant

I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I wanna be
I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I'm gonna be

Ah yeah uh huh that's right

Don't need to be on somebody's arm to look good
(I like who I am)
I'm not saying I don't wanna fall in love 'cos I would
I'm not gonna get hooked up just 'cos you say I should
(Can't romance on demand)
I'm gonna wait so I'm sorry if you misunderstood

[Repeat Chorus]

This is my current single status
My declaration of independence
There's no way I'm trading places
Right now a star's in the ascendant

I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I wanna be
I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I'm gonna be

I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I wanna be
I'm single

Everything in it's right time everything in its right place
I know I'll settle down one day
But 'til then I like it this way... it's my way
Yes I like it this way

Make your move if you want doesn't mean I will or won't
I'm free to make my mind up you either got it or you don't
'Til then I'm single

This is my current single status
My declaration of independence
There's no way I'm trading places
Right now a star's in the ascendant

This is my current single status
My declaration of independence
There's no way I'm trading places
Right now a star's in the the ascendant

I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I wanna be
I'm single
(Right now)
That's how I'm gonna be
(repeat)

DIDO 2ND CONTEST

OMG Yes It's true again. Now this time I will try harder to WIN this contest. More info on Dido's site. Here's what she quoted from her site:

"Following last week's special playback event in the UK, we can reveal that Dido is hosting another Safe Trip Home listening party, in the US on November 15th.

If you live in the US and you'd like to win a trip to the party (including flights and accommodation) then click here to enter the contest, before October 31st."

XTR & I are going to try and win this contest. Unfortunately Mario couldn't attend because of his exam. Wish we can ALL win.
Inshallah We'll try our best to WIN her contest :D

Ask Dido: Part 2

The following has been taken from Dido's site:

"Are you afraid about coming back to your career? Because you were absent for years!!
Mohammed Kaaki, Lebanon
Dido replies: I've certainly never left my career! My life is music and it is part of my every day. I've been really enjoying touring and then making music in the studio these last few years. Learning new instruments, writing more and more, learning about every aspect of music that I can question and doing a lot of home recording! But yes, it is always a challenge for me to then bring the music into the public domain. That has never changed for me. When I write I forget that anything will be heard by anyone. It's such a personal and insular experience between me and the song and the music. So it will take me a bit of adjustment to not feel awkward about the other stuff.


Hi Dido my question is how can you describe your new album to fans who have only heard your singles up to now?
Jamie Daborn
Dido replies: It's not really up to me to describe it. I just pour everything into it and then leave that to other people when they listen. I wlll never know what people hear when they listen to it. I can only go on what I love. But the few things I can tell you are that it is still all about the song. That is what I love about making music. And this time round I decided to reference what I love about electronic music but try and make every sound with non-programmed instruments. For me, that gives it a warmth and dynamic as every keyboard sound, beat, blip, whatever is played by me or my friends. It leaves many surprises in there for the repeat listener.

If I wanted a keyboard sound we would create it with bells, orchestras, old modular synths, marimbas, glass harmonicas, old pianos, playing percussion on guitars, wind instruments, anything! If we wanted a drum loop I would go to the source and managed to work with some of the best drummers in the world (the ones we would have sampled before...). If I wanted reverb on my vocal I would climb into the reverb chamber and sing the whole song again underneath. It obviously took a little time to get the right sound sometimes but it was so much fun and totally worth it in my opinion as it creates a depth and warmth that means I'm still hearing things in the tracks I haven't heard before (and I've heard them a lot...)."

In Class Again: Part 2

So here I am sitting in class, updating my blog. The class doesn't even start until 30 minutes so I am just surfing the net & blogging. Still no news from Dido but I just found out that Heroes Season 3 Episode 6 is finally out. Yay! I can't wait to watch it today ;)
If you want the link to watch it in HD please comment on this post. I will not post the link now because I'm afraid that Etisalat will block the site and I don't want that to happen.

Dido Update: safetriphome.com?

OK there were some people on Dido's forum saying that someone made a site called www.safetriphome.com and it says that it's coming soon. But you can click to view the trailers :) which are posted down here :) Warning Spoilers are revealed:



Mother Lay-By - Dido



Don't Believe in Love - Dido



Us 2 little God (I think she's saying that God is better than us which is True) - Dido



It Come's and Goes - Dido

That's all for now people!

Some Pictures From Dido's Contest:

The Exit :S


The seating area for the fans.... Ya Salam!



The fans who won (unfortunately I didn't win)

The driveway to the contest :)

The house which the contest was held at.
I'm not sure if that's Dido's house

A roaring fire. Look at the pictures above the fireplace ;)


These are the pictures from Dido's concert. They were ALL taken from Dido's Site!

More updates soon!

Email Me

This is the email to my blog everyone. I will give people access to my blog. For example if you want to post something for you, you can email me at retrotrut.dxb_4_life@blogger.com
Note: In all the emails you can post images up to 10mb and you can also write some text on whatever you want ;)
So don't forget to email me your stuff :)

Movie Review: Max Payne

Look, they're twins :P


On Thursday XTR, my younger brother & I decided to go to the movies and watch Max Payne. And God was it extremely lame. This movie looked as if it was made by using a low budget. Seriously. And then they added "the devil" which made it looked stupid. Basically the movie was about this "drug" that whenever you take it, you think the devil is chasing you. It was just like taking a lot of ecstasy, lol. And there weren't enough action scenes, they were mostly talking a lot. blah blah blah crap blah blah blah more crap blah blah blah..... Need I go on?
I would give a rating out of 10 for this movie a 2/10!
I also would Highly Recommend not watching this movie!

Announcement:

The contest about meeting Dido and getting a chance to listen to her new album before it's released will begin tomorrow around 9:00Pm Dubai Time, that's about Noon in the secret location in London and they said the following:
"As you know, Dido is hosting a special advance playback for Safe Trip Home tomorrow afternoon at a secret UK location.

We're going along and we're planning to post photos and updates from the event as it happens, direct to the site. We say "planning" because apparently there isn't much of a phone signal (and certainly no wi-fi), so getting online might be a little tricky. But we're confident we'll be able to post something.

Tune in to the site from about 3pm tomorrow afternoon to (hopefully) join in the fun."

I will be posting ALL the updates during the show if I have no work due for the next day ;)

ATTENTION:

Dear All,


All the below Masterfood Company Chocolate Products (Mars) are no longer Halal. They started using Animal product rennet(pork) in it for products that have expiry date after 1 ^st of October 2007.

Check this article from BBC News

http://news. .bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/business/ 6653175.stm

And this from the Vegetarian Society

http://www.vegsoc. org/news/ 2007/mars. html

· Bounty (NOOOOOOOOO! I LOVE THIS CHOCOLATE MORE THAN GALAXY :( SAD FACE! )
· Celebrations
· Dove Chocolate
· Flyte
· Galaxy (I checked this one out but it seems to be halal, for your safety, don't eat this till further notice)
· Kudos (North America)
· Lockets
· M-Azing (North America)
· Maltesers
· M&M's (also contains milk from China. You have been warned)
· Mars Bar
· Mars Delight
· Milky Way
· Minstrels (UK only)
· Mars Planets (newly inroduced in UK)
· Skittles
· Snickers (also contains milk from China, so beware of the symptoms you'll get just by having this)
· Starbur st (Originally Opal Fruits in the UK .)
· 3 Musketeers ( North America )
· Topic
· Twix
· Snicker's Marathon Energy Bar
· AquaDrops

New Movies to be released during the year of 2008-2009:

1. The Sims: The Movie
   
2. Spider Man 4
3. Saw 5
4. Clover Field 2
5. Transformers 2
6. Ice Age 3
7. Madagascar 2
8. Open Season 2
9. Austin Powers 4
10. The Grudge 3
11. The Host 2
12. Jeepers Creepers 3
13. The Messengers 2
14. Metal Gear Solid: The Movie
15. Saw 6
16. School of Rock 2
17. The Strangers 2
18. X-Men: Origins
19. Butterfly Effect 3
20. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
21. Star Trek
    
22. Night At The Museum 2
23. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
    
24. Final Destination 4

Note: All these movies are not 100% confirmed.

Dido - Slide

Even on a day like this when you're crawling on the floor
Reaching for the phone to ring anyone who knows you anymore
It's all right to make mistakes
you're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something

Staring at the same four walls, have you tried to help yourself
The rings around your eyes they don't hide, that you need to get some rest

It's all right to make mistakes
you're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something
Take time to catch your breathe and choose your moment

Don't slide

Even at a time like this when the morning seems so far
Think that pain belongs to you but it's happened to us all

It's all right to make mistakes
you're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something
Take time to catch your breathe and choose your moment

Don't slide

You brought this on yourself
and it's high time you left it there
Lie here and rest your head
and dream of something else instead

Don't slide

Dido - No Angel Lyrics

If you gave me just a coin for every time we say goodbye
Well I'd be rich beyond my dreams, I'm sorry for my weary life
I know I'm not perfect but I can smile
and I hope that you see this heart behind my tired eyes
If you tell me that I can't, I will, I will, I'll try all night
and if I say I'm coming home, I'll probably be out all night
I know I can be afraid but I'm alive
and I hope that you can trust this heart behind my tired eyes

I'm no angel, but please don't think that I won't try and try
I'm no angel, but does that mean that I can't live my life
I'm no angel, but please don't think that I can't cry
I'm no angel, but does that mean that I won't fly

I know I'm not around each night
and I know I always think I'm right
I can believe that you might look around

I'm no angel, but please don't think that I won't try and try
I'm no angel, but does that mean that I can't live my life
I'm no angel, but please don't think that I can't cry
I'm no angel, but does that mean that I won't fly

Dido - My Lover's Gone Lyrics

my lovers gone
his boots no longer by my door
he left at dawn
and as I slept, I felt him go return no more
I will not watch the ocean
my lovers gone
no earthy ships will ever

bring him home again
bring him home again

my lovers gone
I know that kiss will be my last
no home his song
the tune upon his lips has passed i sing alone
while I watch the ocean
my lovers gone
no earthly ships will ever

bring him home again
bring him home again
bring him home again

Dido - Sand In My Shoes (Live at Good Morning America)

I really wish I went to this concert :) but I didn't :(

DIDO VIDEOS

Dido Crowned as Song writer as the year

All of the following has been taken from Dido's website

"London October 15, 2008: The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) honoured the top writer and publisher members of the PRS - the UK's Performing Right Society - at a ceremony held at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. The top award went to Dido, who was named Songwriter of the Year and was recognised for the songs Thank You and White Flag."

JUST STAND UP:

The following video is a song about cancer. Many singers such as Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Melissa Etheridge, Withney Houston, Ciara, Carrie Underwood, Sheryl Crow, Natasha Bedingfield, Fergie, Leona Lewis and many others sang this song for Cancer. It's a little weird but it's for a good cause :)
This video is Copyrighted to Retrotrut & YouTube as well as All the people who sang in this song :)

The Sims 3: Announcement

Well about a few months ago EA Games said that The Sims 3 will be released during February (Date found on Snooty Sims).
There is a count-down running on 2 fansites and they are:
Snooty Sims & Infinite Sims

Also it has been mentioned that The Sims 3 has opened they're site and they have a VIP area for SOME members (as in all of us). There you can read things that they posted about the game.

And finally you can now Pre-Order the game on The Sims 3. Click here to go on the link.

Update: The Sims 2 is now going to be ending with they're last Stuff Pack. Rumor has it that it's The Sims 2: Garden & Mansion Stuff Pack. But it's not 100% confirmed. See here for more info

Dido Update: Contest Over!

Now this is totally unfair. I DIDN'T win the contest to go and meet Dido :( but they did however mention that there is a bidding for the contest which unfortunately ended about a few hours ago :(
just read the following article:
"As we revealed last week, Dido is hosting a very special playback of Safe Trip Home this weekend at a secret location. The competition to win tickets (plus travel and accommodation) has now closed, but you can still be there (and get your accommodation paid for) by bidding in a special charity auction for Oxfam, which is currently underway on eBay.

Click here to place your bid.

(Oh, and we can reveal that the location is somewhere in Buckinghamshire, England...) "

That was taken from Dido's site!

Dido Update: Another photo discovered

Lost & Found: Sade - Missing

Announcement:

There will be some updates later today and some major updates tomorrow after 7:30PM.

I would also like to mention that Kylie Minouge is coming to Dubai on the 21st of November 2008. This concert will be for the opening of Atlantis (at last). Kylie said that this is her first concert in the Middle East :)

Also in other news, there are not many updates on Dido. Sorry for the inconvenience. I will try to get some news but unfortunately I'm in the middle of quizzes :(

The following days are considered "Hell" Days. Tuesday - Thursday & Next Tuesday.

Starting next week on Tuesday I will be having another quiz. but it's not 100% confirmed. I'll get the information from the professor.

And the last but not least Heroes

Dido Update: New Found on YouTube!

The following video was taken from

Dido Answers Your Questions:

I found this on Dido's site. It's the latest update but read more to find out how Dido can answer your questions.

Hey Dido, I wanted to know what's your favorite song from the new album?

Dido replies: That changes every day and is the same with the other records. At the moment, though, I still love listening to it as a whole piece. I spent a while choosing the order of the 11 songs I picked (from a big bunch) and meant it to be a bit of a journey and so I'm still just putting it on at the beginning and going with it. Songs change for me as time goes on. That's one of the things I love about writing - how a song can change its meaning for me over the years even though I was being specific at the time.

What was the last concert you went to?

Dido replies: The last thing I saw was Laura Marling doing an acoustic show in London recently. Really enjoyed it.

You wish someday see the Earth from the perspective of that astronaut of the album cover? Why you chose it?

Dido replies: I would definitely love to see the earth from space if I got the chance one day. To see pictures of the earth from space reminds me how spectacularly beautiful the planet is, especially when it's in contrast to the darkness in space. And how together we all are on the planet. How everything and everyone I know and love is somewhere on the picture. I dream about floating up there and imagining the sounds, silence, sunsets, the speed of the earth spinning, sunrises, the cold, the depth of the stars. Everything! I chose the cover as the picture is one I have loved for a long time. It shows an astronaut (Bruce McCandless) trying out the first manned manoeuvre unit and he is basically the first man to go out there without cords attached as far as I can tell! (Obviously I'm not the expert). What an adventure.

If you want Dido to answer any of your questions just email her at askdido@didomusic.com

DIDO UPDATE: Review on her new album "Safe Trip Home"

The following has been taken from Here


"It's five years since Life for Rent, Dido's nine-million selling follow-up to 2001's 12-million selling debut No Angel, so you might wonder what's been taking so long. The answer, judging by her third studio album Safe Trip Home, is that Dido has been taking some time to mature, both musically and emotionally. Where Life For Rent was a series of snapshots from the life of a newly single girl (one reviewer called it the musical equivalent of Bridget Jones's Diary), Safe Trip Home is overwhelmingly colored by the death at the end of 2006 of her father.

Not that it's a gloomy album, but these songs are noticeably more reflective, their themes of longing and absence rooted deeper than the caprices of romantic love, and consequently it feels more serious than her previous work. The outstanding song of the album is the piercingly beautiful, Celtic-flavored 'Grafton Street', a six-minute hymn to loss co-written with Brian Eno and featuring Mick Fleetwood on drums. Listen to it once and it will catch at your heart as a wrenching lament for a lover who will not return. Listen to it again knowing it's an account of visiting her father during his last illness and death ('My love, I know you're leaving, but I will stay here with you') and I guarantee you will be bawling your eyes out uncontrollably long after the album has finished. There's an honesty and depth to this song that you can't fake, even if you tend to the opinion that Dido's distinctive cracked falsetto generally has a limited emotional range.

But that light, husky sweetness lends itself well to intelligent mainstream pop, and this album has benefitted from time spent in LA at the studio of Jon Brion (producer of Fiona Apple, Kanye West and Rufus Wainwright), who co-produced the album alongside Dido and her brother and long-time collaborator Rollo Armstrong. Brion is also responsible for a number of the sumptuous string arrangements that swell the sound to rather grandiose levels on songs such as 'Let's Do the Things We Normally Do' and the first single, 'Don't Believe in Love', but Dido's own musical contribution is formidable: she plays keyboards, drums and/or guitar on most of the tracks. The lilting recorder solo that carries 'Grafton Street' to its haunting conclusion is apparently played on the same instrument she played as a student at the Guildhall School of Music.

The other notable contribution is from Citizen Cope, a Brooklyn-based guitarist, DJ and keyboard player, who duets on the laid-back 'Burnin Love', the grit of his voice providing a welcome contrast with hers. The nine-minute closer, 'Northern Skies', co-written with Rollo, is the nearest Dido has ever come to poetry, experimenting with little Irish vocal quavers and an expansive musical landscape that makes the more traditional pop tracks such as 'Don't Believe in Love' sound unimaginative by comparison. 'Don't say how proud you are,' she pleads in 'Let's Do the Things We Normally Do', another song that addresses an inevitable last goodbye. But this album is a mature and thoughtful collection of songs and a fine memorial to her father, who would have been right to be proud."

Announcement:

The site will be updated every few days but as of today. Dido week will be postponed till next Sunday on the 19th of October 2008. The reason is that this week I'm going to be having a few problems blogging because I have to study for my big test on Psychology on Tuesday the 14th of October 2008. So I won't really be online that much and also I discovered something new on MSN. XTR you already know about it. But on Wednesday, I will be so busy in classes till God knows what time!
I wish it was the weekend again!!!!!
Don't we all wish that?