Dido revisits her landmark debut album, No Angel

Dido celebrates the 25th anniversary of her debut album, No Angel,  with the release of a striking marbled red vinyl edition.

Initially a release that fell under the radar, Dido’s No Angel soon became one of the UK’s best-selling albums of all-time. Spending seven weeks at No.1 and over a year in the Top 10, the album reached a staggering 10 x Platinum in recognition of more than 3 million domestic sales and earned Dido the BRIT Awards for Best British Album and Best British Female Artist as well as her first Ivor Novello.

That success was replicated all over the globe, ensuring that No Angel became a worldwide phenomenon with over 15 million sales. It’s still being discovered and admired today, amassing  a total of 1.2 billion streams as well as 20 million monthly listeners at Spotify – all despite being released long before the streaming era took shape.

Sophisticated And Fresh

No Angel sounds just as confessional, sophisticated and fresh as it did back then. The big singles Thank You (famously sampled in Eminem’s Stan), Here With Me and Hunter naturally standout. But from Don’t Think Of Me to Worthless via All I Want, the album’s strength is its purity: stellar songwriting full of raw emotions, performed by an voice of elegant distinction. It demonstrates why Dido has become admired by subsequent artists such as Caroline Polachek.

The 25th Anniversary Edition houses the original album in a special vinyl package. The front cover features new artwork, which consists of a contact sheet of photography from the original album campaign, with a door on each side which opens to reveal a sleeve with another classic Dido photo. This contains the album, pressed on striking marbled red vinyl. A standard black vinyl will also be available.

Not So Bad

Dido followed No Angel with another smash album with the No.1 Life For Rent, which featured the hit singles White Flag and the title track, before leading to two more BRIT Awards and a second Ivor Novello. She has since released three further Top 5 albums in the shape of Safe Trip Home (2008), Girl Who Got Away (2013) and Still On My Mind (2019). If I Rise, her collaboration with A.R. Rahman, featured in the Danny Boyle film 127 Hours and was nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars.

She also won a third Ivor Novello in 2019 for Outstanding Song Collection, and last year amassed 500 million streams when she contributed to a new version of Thank You, reimagined as Thank You (Not So Bad), in collaboration with Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Tiësto and W&W.

The No Angel 25th Anniversary Edition is released on 19 September. It is now available to pre-order here

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