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Birth name: Florian Cloud De Bounevialle Armstrong

Birthday: December 25, 1971 

Place of birth: Islington, North London, UK

Nationality: English

Raised in: England

Natural hair color: Blond

Eye color: Blue

Height: 172 cm (5'8)

Education / Profession: London's Guildhall School of Music, Birkbeck College / singer

Labels: BMG, Arista

Music styles: Alternative,  Pop, Rock

First released record: "Thank you"  - 1997

Claim to fame: Album "No Angel" (1999

Awards:
> Brit Awards: 2002, 2004
> Echo Deutscher Musikpreis: 2000
> World Music Awards: 2004

How it all began: Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong or, as the world knows her, Dido, was born on December 25, 1971 in London, UK. Her inclination towards music showed pretty soon – at the age of 5 she stole her first recorder (the instrument, not the machine) from a lost and found property room at her school, and after practicing (of her own free will) for 6 hours a day for a year, she ended up enrolled to the Guildhall School of Music. There she expanded her instrumental range with piano and violin by the time she was 10.

Mixing the classical with the modern – continuing her musical education and touring Europe with her school’s classical music ensemble while at the same time nicking her brother’s less classical music such as The Clash, she finally discovered Ella Fitzgerald when she was 16 and her choice was made.

She began singing with various bands while also working as a literary agent and attending law school. One of the bands was that of her brother Rollo – once she managed to persuade him at length that she really can sing – and she also appeared as backup vocals on their debut album, Reverence, in 1996. The band was Faithless.

Faithless became very popular and Dido was dividing her time, after taking a year off from her work (against her brother’s advice) between touring with the Faithless and working on her own music. When the year was over, she signed a contract with Arista (personally with the head of the company, Clive Davis, who discovered such names as Janis Joplin or Santana). The result was her brilliant debut album No Angel. It was first released in the US in 1999 (European release took a year longer due to contractual disputes), but its take-off wasn’t as fast as anybody who knows the album would expect. However, rapper Eminem asked Dido for a permission to use part of the song Thank You (which also appeared on the soundtrack to Sliding Doors) in his Stan. He did so – and just on the strength of the six lines, No Angel started to sell like hot cakes. And Dido was in the open for real.

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