Dido, Love lost and safe sex
Dido's star has risen. Her first album sold over 12 million copies, her current album Life for Rent two million copies in two months and she has been nominated in three different categories for next week's Brit Awards.
Despite all that, she seems the opposite of the over-hyped, under-dressed sirens of the music business. Her stage show involves nothing that Britney, Kylie or Beyonce would call dancing. Furthermore, she keeps her clothes on, and the clothes she has on cover most of her.
Her songs also break the pop mould. She sings not of urgent desire, nor of a passion that trumpets to the heavens - the 'can't live, if living is without you' kind - nor in booming chords about the agony of unrequited love. Rather, she reflects understatedly on love as it is lived along life's road: how, for example, a thoughtful lover gives her a towel as she comes in from the rain and transforms a terrible day into 'the best day of my life'.
Indeed, many of her songs are inner monologues which combine with simple arrangements and the fragile melancholy of her beautiful voice to create a sense of intimacy.
Her recent album captures the excitement of romantic love but also the desperate destructiveness of contemporary courtship patterns. On 'Stoned', Dido describes the desolation of sex with someone who has put an emotional cap on their relationship:
" ... what's the point
when I'm having to hold this fire down?
I think I'll explode, if I can't feel this freely now."
Similarly, she returns from a holiday romance having 'sensibly' agreed, as people do, that it must go no further, yet wanting the opposite. Here, Dido's songs reflect on the anguish that ensues when there are no healthy criteria for sexual engagement. The sub-text - though she seems too caught in her culture to see it clearly - is this: 'safe sex' isn't.
Certainly, relationships consummated without commitment are not only sinful but can be enormously destructive and Dido's popularity is probably in no small measure because her songs resonate with many people's emotional experience. She and the fans who help to shape today's dating culture would surely benefit from another, more ancient form of lyrical wisdom, The Song of Songs:
"Daughters of Jerusalem...
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires."
Mark Greene
I'm a Christian and I love this song. I've just re-read the words and must admit I can't see anything in it which confirms any sexual aspect to the relationship. It could be possibly fair to assume it has taken place, but to be honest I think it is a stretch.
Date:
2011-08-30 10:28:15
Author:
Tony