The best bit of Here with Me - Dido

Hold on to your fleece zips...

Overture

Welcome back to pop heaven, fellow musically minded mates! We are writing this in the early days of December, which means we’re necking Baileys (tenner on the Tesco Clubcard, FYI) regretting frittering away yet another year and - most importantly - freaking out about our Spotify Wrapped reports. Very much like the Ghost of Christmas Past judging our previous actions, if the Ghost of Christmas Past told Scrooge he got way, waaaay too obsessed with the Challengers soundtrack in April.

Now that we’ve all recovered from learning just how much we listened to Geri Halliwell’s It’s Raining Men at the gym this year, it’s time to get festive for today’s song!

And when you’ll read the next line, you’ll be like, ‘what, no? Fuck off? There are no sleigh bells on this?’ but the Real Ones will immediately understand where this is going.

Today’s song | Here with me – Dido

Now, I am aware that today’s song pick might not be everyone’s cup of tea (in fact, you could say that your tea’s gone cold and you’re wondering why! Lol!) but please hear me out. It’s been 25 years since bathtimes got a lot more sensual, that layered flicky bobs became the currency of all hairdressers across the nation, that rom-com soundtracks were irrevocably changed forever more. What the hell am I talking about, I hear you cry? I just mean that it’s been 25 years since Dido’s debut album No Angel was released, that’s all!

Yes, I know what they all say about our Dido! I am aware of the Popworld viral clip where Amy Winehouse throws tomatoes at her billboard!

But back in the early 00s, she was the moment, whether you liked it or not. Over two decades later, can’t we see that Dido was kinda necessary for this weird moment in turn-of-the-millennium pop culture? As I argued in the Kylie and Robbie’s Kids entry, this 1999-2000 era was a really mad period for contemporary trends, with nobody quite sure what an entire new millennium of time really meant for *the zeitgeist*. So, the UK just kinda defaulted to soft acoustic stuff for a bit: think Coldplay, Travis and David goddamn Gray. (They even made a rom-com named after a David Gray song! He’s even in it!) And Dido was very much part of that subdued pantheon.

This era gets a lot of stick (think Super Hans from Peep Show’s Coldplay/Nazis quote) but now that we’ve had some time to reflect… was there anything so wrong with embracing the gentle? What is so bad about gazing calmly out the window, mulling things over? And so what if Dido has 14 middle names, with one of them being Cloud? This song is still a goddamn jam!

The (whole lotta) history

You might’ve thought Thank You was Dido’s big debut single – or maybe you have never entertained such a thought in your life, because you’re normal. Nonetheless, it was actually the haunting piano ballad Here with Me that came first – launching in the US in 1999, but weirdly didn’t hit the UK ‘til 2001. Maybe we just weren’t ready for it.

Anyway, coupled with her second single Thank You, famously sampled by Eminem of all people, Dido was propelled into best-selling success, with her first album, No Angel, becoming one of the biggest UK records of the 2000s. (James Blunt’s Back to Bedlam beat it – make of that what you will for our mindset in the early noughties.)

Whatever it was about Dido, the public (including me, yes!) were buying it – those sleeveless tops and non-offensive, silky vocals were just irresistible. But by teaming up with Eminem for his mega-hit Stan (which apparently popularised the term ‘stanning’, fact fans) Dido had the edge over the other elevator music girlies of the time. Add the fact that one of the producers of her album was her brother Rollo (wow, what a family) who was part of electronic group Faithless, and you can understand where the dancier, trip-hop influences of the record (FWIW, the Take My Hand Rollo & Sister Remix hits different) came from.

And while Here With Me in particular didn’t set the world alight in the charts, it bagged itself a theme song slot on defunct US sci-fi series Roswell. But soon, an even bigger screen influence was about to boost this song’s cachet...

The perfect moment

LOVE ACTUALLY FANS, HIVE RISE. Yes, if you’re still ‘here with me’ (lol) you already knew why this song was appropriate to talk about in the festive season – not because Dido happens to be born on Christmas day (cool trivia, though) but because Here With Me provides one of the most harmonious moments across all of movie history.

Forget “Stuck in the Middle With You” from Reservoir Dogs! Who cares about “Bohemian Rhapsody” in Wayne’s World (okay, still me, but please hush) – the best employment of a pop song in a film scene is the bit in beloved/hated Christmas film Love Actually (2003) where Andrew Lincoln has been caught obsessively filming Keira Knightley and must leave her flat in shame, zipping up his fleece to the key change of Dido’s seminal debut hit!!!!

Everybody knows this was a cultural reset. And in a film full of unhinged moments, from the worst instances of sexism and fatphobia ever committed to screen, this sequence reigned supreme. And that’s before we even get to the cue cards bit.

Nobody asked this moment to go this hard. The crux of this song on its own is good enough already, but who knew soundtracking it to Andrew Lincoln angrily walking around London would be the crucial pairing we all needed? Like enjoying the most perfect cheese with the finest wine.

Those echoing Dido wails of “I WON’T GO”! I WON’T SLEEP!” as Andrew Lincoln meanders around a shopping centre or something, are incredible. The strings! Beautiful! The vocal stacking! Gorgeous! Is THIS easy listening?! No way. This is hard listening, more like. Rock hard listening.

Did Andrew Lincoln *know* he’d be zipping up his terrible fleece to this incredible crescendo when he was acting out the scene? His distressed mannerisms suggest yes? Maybe all actors are thinking of the key change in Here With Me in pivotal moments, just in case? They should be. And where did they even get this fleece from? Did the costume department on Love Actually look for a fleece that would perfectly suit a Dido number? I bet they did, those sons of bitches. Anyway, I’m not saying this moment is the true meaning of Christmas or anything, but I’m not *not* saying that either. Merry Stalkmas, everyone!

Final pop ponderings

Why did Dido get SO popular in that late 90s/early 00s crossover period? It’s true this was a very strange time for contemporary music (and just about everything else) but interesting that the UK scene seemed to pivot towards this melancholic soft rock, folk-pop vibe (or ‘folktronica’ as I’ve seen No Angel called) for a while. Was it just the Eminem thing? Or were we simply craving some sort of ‘authentic’ easy-listening sound after a hardcore decade of Spice Girls, Oasis and *checks notes* Aqua?

There was definitely a feeling of mellowing out after the explosion of ‘Cool Brittania’ in the mid-90s, where everything was so brash and colourful, almost cartoonish at times. As we hit the millennium, the Spice Girls split up and Mel C went a bit trip-hoppy too, Blur were swapping their pseudo-cockney ladsongs with more experimental pensive stuff and people started wearing earnest baker boy hats a lot more. We were just feeling soooo down-to-earth and keeping it real with a bit of Stereophonics, ygwim?

Perhaps after so many years of very segregated music fandoms (The Britpop lovers, the girlband stans, the grungey lads, the Moby sympathisers…) the nation started gravitating towards something altogether more mainstream and ‘safe’? Just sit back, whack on BBC Radio 2, and enjoy the ennui together? Perhaps we’d all just lost our cultural identity after such huge musical movements that had started petering out at the dawn of the millennium, and we just needed a short break to wear bootcut jeans and figure stuff out for a while?

Whatever it was, it didn’t last long - especially once The Strokes rocked up from across the pond kicking off the indie sleaze movement. As for Dido, she’s still knocking about of course, doing cute low-key collabs with Caroline Polachek and still dining out on Thank You nostalgia, but much like her iconic flippy bangs, we’ve outgrown that era now.