Singer Dido takes music lessons

Singer Dido went to university in Los Angeles to take music classes while making her new album, she has revealed.

"I just wanted to use my brain," she said, adding her fellow students did not recognise her initially.

"No-one noticed. It's great, no one ever does," she said. "I don't go out of my way to be noticed, but I wasn't wearing a fake beard or anything."

She took evening classes while making Safe Trip Home, her first album for five years, which is out next month.

She also studied English at the University of California in Los Angeles, where she was living while making the record.

"I went to study some orchestration stuff because I got so inspired working with all the orchestras," she told BBC News.

"I would go off a couple of evenings a week and come back to the studio completely fired and with my brain in a completely different place.

"It's actually amazing because you go so far into another side of your brain when you're studying something completely different, and I loved it."

Asked whether her fellow classmates eventually realised who she was, she replied: "Yeah but, you know, no-one cares."

'More misunderstood'

Dido is one of the best-selling artists of the past 10 years, with her first two albums selling more than 20 million copies around the world.

She is not the first music superstar to return to music classes in recent months.

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea recently signed up to study at the University of Southern California to develop his knowledge of "the math and academics" of musical structure.

And Snow Patrol said they "learned to play their instruments a lot better" after taking extra tuition while making their new album.

Dido, who attended London's Guildhall School of Music from the age of six, became a star after Eminem sampled her song Thank You on his hit Stan in 2000.

She said says her new single, Don't Believe in Love, is fast becoming one of the "more misunderstood" songs of her career.

The song appears to be about a heartless woman's desire for her man to get up and go home before she awakes after a night of passion.

"I want it to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean," she said.

Source:BBC