So here's the problem: You are a bookish singer-songwriter type with a penchant for lighter-than-air vocal stylings and music that falls somewhere between trip-hop and the Lilith Fair compilation CD. You released your album more than a year ago, but despite almost nonstop touring and a low-level buzz, it's barely made a dent in the charts. It has yet to be released in your home country.

One possible solution: Get sampled. By the most controversial rap artist of the year. For a song about an obsessive fan who kills himself.

That, in a nutshell, has been the secret of Dido 's success. The British singer's debut, No Angel -- a wispy collection of folk-electronica reminiscent of Beth Orton -- was released in June 1999 to positive reviews. The slow-burning first single, "Here With Me," was even used as the theme song for the WB series Roswell. But it wasn't until Eminem used the chorus of Dido's sweet-bordering-on-sappy love song "Thank You" as the hook for his own far more sinister "Stan" that the peeps began to take notice.

"It is sort of strange," admits the twenty-eight-year-old, calling from her home in London. "Luckily, I love 'Stan.' I do think it's brilliant. And 'Thank You' is my favorite song from my album. I wrote it as this sort of really simple, nice song -- sort of sugary-sweet on purpose. And I love the fact that you could now read the whole of my song as this weird, obsessive fantasy."

Dido's path to the pop world was equally unorthodox. She grew up in an eccentric London household. Her mom wrote thousands of poems -- promptly hiding them, never attempting to get them published. (Dido figured out her mom's hiding place and would occasionally sneak peeks; she's only willing to describe the contents as "pretty shocking.") Her father was a literary agent specializing in military books. "There were always these bizarre old generals around the house," Dido recalls. Television was completely banned, so fun had to be produced domestically rather than imported.

For young Dido, "fun" meant hours of practicing classical music on her recorder. "I was quite strange when I was a kid," she acknowledges. "I'd come home after school and play music for six or seven hours a night. My parents weren't that into it. They didn't push me. When I was five, I just decided I wanted to play the recorder. Basically, in England, that's the instrument that everyone plays in school. It sounds absolutely awful. It's a hundred kids playing out of tune at the same time. I learned pretty much all of the classical music written for the recorder."

She eventually moved on to piano and violin, before discovering, at the late age of sixteen, that boys and nightclubs could, occasionally, be more interesting than books and sheet music. "But it was weird how soon I missed music," she says. "After about a year of not playing much at all, I started singing." Dido turned professional when she began recording and touring with her older brother Rollo's trip-hop collective, Faithless. (Never an underachiever, Dido, at the time, was also working as a literary agent and attending law school at night.) Rollo produced and co-wrote several of the tracks on No Angel, which is soon to be issued in the U.K.; the sale of her British record label held up the release for more than a year.

Next up: a starring role as -- you guessed it -- Stan's girlfriend in the "Stan" video. Dido will also play a few live dates with Mr. Shady later this fall. "I respect Eminem; I love what he does, and I'm proud to be a part of it," she says. "I didn't think there'd be quite so much hype about the album when they asked me for permission for the sample. I said, 'Yes, brilliant,' and then I forgot about it. Which was pretty stupid of me." Dido laughs, adding, "Especially hearing 'Stan,' I knew this record wasn't necessarily going to be all bubbly and bright. But all of the press interest took me by surprise.

"But I don't sing 'Thank You' any differently," she continues. "At the end of the day, it's still innocent, even if you're being obsessive. It's still quite a naive song -- although I love the fact that it's a bit darker now."

MARK BINELLI
(October 25, 2000)