On the promotional trail for her debut album in 2004, a journalist told Amy Winehouse that her record reminded them of an album by Dido. The journalist was never seen again. Not really. But Winehouse’s rapidly curdling expression, in a clip that goes viral every few years, is its own kind of murder spree: raised eyebrows, pursed lips, side glances, fast blinks, exaggerated sighs, seething inhales. Resting “Is this lady actually kidding?” face. Winehouse, of course, was a colossus – thrilling, tortured, contradictory. Dido was a superstar by accident, and a dynamo in the art of sonic vapour. Whose bright idea was it to ever compare them?
That vapour, though, made bank. Released 25 years ago today, Dido’s debut record No Angel remains one of the bestselling albums in British chart history, and the second bestselling album of the Noughties in the UK (James Blunt’s Back to Bedlam takes the top spot). It includes “Thank You”, the track sampled to massive success on the chorus of Eminem’s “Stan”, as well as languid folktronica like “Here with Me”, with its heart-monitor synths and dramatic enough strings to adequately soundtrack Andrew Lincoln as he ran sadly along the Embankment in Love Actually. It’s also neither as bland as conventional wisdom suggests it is, nor quite interesting enough to be a secret classic. But it’s undeniably pretty. Calming and tender. Aggressively OK. You can easily imagine Jamie Oliver making a fish finger buttie to it.
