Intimacy, poignancy, memories, melancholy, and loss are represented in this 1999 CD, the first by Dido, now a British music icon. This work represents the epitome of success (to me) because every song is a winner. No pushing the skip button on any of these.

Dido has been compared with other singers--Sinead O'Connor, Sarah MacLachlan, and Beth Orton, but there are no comparisons--Dido is an original, a force all her own.

Her birth name is Florian Cloud de Bounevaille O'Malley Armstrong, daughter of a French poet and Irish politician, but she informally calls herself Dido. The mythic/historical Dido/Elissa was queen of Carthage at the time Rome was founded and later succorred and bedded Aeneas after the Trojan War, after which he left her to return to Rome.

1. "Here with me"--I didn't hear you leave/I don't want to move a thing, it might change my memory....I cannot be, until you're resting here with me.
2. "Hunter"--One of two favorites--She wants to be a "hunter" again, to take a chance on life again; love has died.
3. "Don't think of me"--You chose her over me, now she's with your best friend--It's too late to think of me
4. "My lover's gone" Her lover is dead and will never return.
5. "All you want"--She sings the Celtic "yelp" or yodel as it is called in the South
6. "Thank You"--My other favorite--"I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life, oh just to be with you is having the best day of my life"--Happiness in the messiness of life.
7. "Honestly OK"--Instruments are great: percussion, synthesizer with bubbly sounds like a person drowning in sadness: "I just want to feel safe in my own skin, I just want to be happy again"

11. "My life"--a Nora Jones kind of song--She sings of disappointment in her lover and says she is responsible for her own happiness.
12."Take my hand"--touch my skin and tell me what you're thinking. Lie down next to me, tell me how you're feeling. Has a full orchestral sound.

Dido's voice is an instrument as much as the instruments. Her instrument soothes, causes the face to let fall tears, smile, definitely sing along and relish in both sadness and happiness. Dido in Latin means "wanderer" and wandering we will go down this road of rich musicality and emotions.