Dido

Four years after the critically-acclaimed “Safe Trip Home” became Dido’s third platinum seller, taking her to an astonishing career total of 29 million albums sold worldwide, London-based recording artist and songwriter returns with her fourth album. And it’s no exaggeration to say that “GIRL WHO GOT AWAY” might just be her finest record yet. These are the songs of defiance, hope and heartbreak to make the planet fall in love and connect with Dido all over again.

Recording “GIRL WHO GOT AWAY,” Dido was often reminded of making “No Angel,” her debut album which remains one of the biggest-selling records of this century. Like that world-conquering debut, her new album is built around waves of sumptuous beats, Dido’s softly powerful voice and a host of strikingly memorable songs. Warm, evocative and bursting with the emotion of life’s little details, “GIRL WHO GOT AWAY” is classic Dido; at once modern and timeless.

Also, as with “No Angel” (and, indeed, its 2003 follow-up, “Life For Rent”) the majority of the new album’s literate, life-affirming songs were written and produced by Dido and her brother, Faithless founder Rollo Armstrong. And, just like in the early days, she worked on it without really imagining that people would ever hear it.

“It was an incredibly fun record to make,” she beams. “There was no pressure on me at all. It’s all been so natural and easy.” Dido had a blast, whether working alone at her kitchen table or alongside trusted top-notch collaborators Brian Eno, Jeff Bhasker, Rick Nowels, Greg Kurstin and, of course, Rollo in various home studios and hotel rooms on either side of the Atlantic. “On every other record I’ve made, there have been really tricky days,” she says, “but there weren’t any like that on this one.”

Much of the album was written and recorded before the summer of 2011, not long after receiving an Oscar nomination for “If I Rise”, the “127 Hours” theme song she made with A.R. Rahman, when Dido and her husband had their first child.

“I wrote everything on this album before I got pregnant,’ she says. “And a lot of it was actually recorded while I was pregnant. It’s really fun to think back to when I was singing these songs. Like with title track ‘Girl Who Got Away,’ I remember the baby was kicking me to the point I thought I was going to fall over!”

An unmistakable optimism shines through the new album, which Dido completed late in 2012 after taking a year off to concentrate on motherhood. That positive spirit is there in the life-loving, “Go Dreaming”; in the ode to true love that is the album’s first single, “No Freedom”; and in the driving “Let Us Move On,” which features a pin-sharp guest spot from the world’s hottest rapper, Kendrick Lamar. And it glows particularly brightly in the loved-up redemption of the folksy, autobiographical “Sitting On The Roof Of The World.”

Which isn’t to say that this album is all sweetness and light: Dido certainly retains her knack for disguising a barbed lyric with a beguiling melody. So, the propulsive “End Of Night” might sound like one of her most upbeat songs yet, but it is, in fact, a rather vicious break-up song. “Blackbird,” meanwhile, is deliciously withering.

And the album’s title? “It’s one of my favorite songs on the record,” she says. “But I guess it also sums up the last few years for me. Taking a step back from it all and going off to have the whole happy adventure of starting a family and making an album that I really am so proud of. And now I just can’t wait for people to hear it.”

She might be the girl who got away. But clearly, Dido is back.