ONTD

So when Dido says she hasn’t sung in front of another human being in five years, she’s not counting immediate family. “I see the world in songs. My idea of relaxing is to sing and play, even if half the time it’s nursery rhymes. I do love singing. Stanley’s two and recently it’s been a lot of fun, ‘cause he loves music, he loves drumming, he loves joining in band rehearsals, he’s just so excited. It’s so nice seeing it through someone else’s eyes, a proper, fresh perspective. I have done music since I was a teeny little kid. It’s sort of been the answer to everything, bad times, good times, whatever times, music is a comfort and it’s limitless to me. I know I will never get bored in my life ‘cause I’ve got that.”

Dido had a very bohemian upbringing, the child of a poet and a publisher. She was christened Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, of which she says, “it was that sort of household”. Dido was her family nickname, which she didn’t particularly appreciate, and she has spoken before about childhood bullying and her longing for a more commonplace existence. Her brother, Rollo Armstrong, started a record label and formed crossover dance group Faithless while Dido, despite being a classically trained musician, initially went into publishing, moonlighting as an occasional vocalist with Faithless before recording her breakthrough solo album.

It’s a background that might explain why, on the surface at least, she almost revels in a kind of ordinariness, putting herself across as a prettier and more soulful Bridget Jones. She relocated to Los Angeles at the height of her fame, but returned after two years because: “I do like my friends and family. In a funny sort of way, I spent so much of my life just wanting to fit in, and always feeling slightly freaky and outside. I just want to feel part of something.”

When she first appeared, her mix of electronic and acoustic instrumentation on delicate, sensitive songs seemed very individual and striking, yet somehow her accessible melodiousness, smiling face and ease of tone made her almost a byword for boring, along with those other early 21st-century British transatlantic success stories, Coldplay and David Gray. “It makes me laugh, because they are two of my favourites of all time. That’s music I really love, so, you know what, if that’s boring, maybe I am boring! Music is subjective. It’s there for the taking. If it offends, just turn it off.”

Personally, I have never found Dido dull. On the surface, her music has an easy accessibility, but underneath there is often something dark and contradictory stirring. Thank You became a global hit after Eminem sampled it for Stan, but the tensions in the melody and lyric were already present. “To me, it’s all about juxtaposition. Thank You has a chorus that is incredibly sweet, and to darken it you get verses about having a ---- day. Otherwise, it would be ‘it’s a lovely day, and I love you’’, and I’m not interested in that kind of song, because life’s not like that. You get bleakness and hope and it’s all mixed up together.”

Girl Who Got Away is filled with the familiar, breezy mix of her breakthrough hits, but running through the centre there’s a strand of songs as bleak and hopeless as anything on the more melancholic Safe Trip Home. “I am sort of an eternal optimist, annoyingly so. I like to see the good in everything, so I’m not cynical, I’m not dark,” says Dido, acknowledging the distance between her cheerful persona and troubled lyrics. “But I do feel things strongly, often on behalf of other people. I soak up a lot of stuff, so there can be huge moments of elation and darkness. I’d rather go through life that way than just being vaguely chirpy. If an emotion is strong enough then a song will arrive. I put everything into it but I’m not saying here’s an insight into my personality. It’s not that interesting to me, so I find it hard to believe it would be to anyone else.”

Girl Who Got Away (RCA/Sony) is out on March 4