Girl Who Got Away - Dido
  • Band Name: Dido
  • Record Label: RCA
  • Release Date: Mar 26, 2013
Metascore
59 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 12 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
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  1. Entertainment Weekly
    Mar 29, 2013
    83
    [Dido] carries it with her creamy alto and her sweetly ethereal allure. [5 Apr 2013, p.67]
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  2. All Music Guide
    Mar 25, 2013
    80
    Halfway through, Girl Who Got Away sucks you into its sway, its comforts as alluring as they are elusive.
  3. musicOMH.com
    Mar 1, 2013
    80
    As an album, it doesn’t break any new ground--it doesn’t try to. What it does do though is sweep itself up in a groundswell of beautiful, heart-tugging nostalgia so strong it’s as if 2003 lies just beyond the window again, shimmering in the haze of the morning dew.
  4. BBC Music
    Mar 1, 2013
    70
    Admittedly, the album contains the odd soporific song like No Freedom, but these turns are outweighed by tracks with a strong tune or an unexpected hint of sadness.
  5. Mojo
    Apr 10, 2013
    60
    Surprises include End Of Night, nicely brutish electro-pop where Dido's automaton vocal really works; funked-up raga/calypso Love To Blame; and Sitting On The Roof Of The World.... Otherwise, Musak coming soon to a changing room near you. [May 2013, p.88]
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  6. The New York Times
    Mar 25, 2013
    60
    The electronics are there, however, and they lift the album’s better songs out of the sad-sack zone.
  7. The Observer (UK)
    Mar 4, 2013
    60
    There are some more adventurous diversions, including a guest spot from Kendrick Lamar.
  8. The Guardian
    Mar 1, 2013
    60
    While her new dance direction leads to a fairly tame trip-hop/chill-out zone, it's a great improvement on her usual blandness.
  9. Uncut
    Mar 1, 2013
    50
    It would be nice to see Dido with more adventurous producers. [Apr 2013, p.69]
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  10. PopMatters
    Mar 21, 2013
    40
    There are some new moves here, but they tend to feel half-baked, under-exploited or, in the case of Kendrick Lamar’s appearance on “Let Us Move On”, just a bit hackneyed.
  11. Q Magazine
    Mar 12, 2013
    40
    Day Before We Went To War, co-written by Brian Eno, inflects mundane details with enigmatic dread in a similar fashion to the frostbitten adult pop if ABBA's final years. If only you could hear this colder, bolder Dido in every song. [Apr 2013, p.101]
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  12. The Independent (UK)
    Mar 1, 2013
    40
    It ticks along unremarkably on smudges of synthesiser and shuffling drum programmes, augmented by acoustic guitar or synthetic brass stabs.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.1 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 14 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. StrawberryBlond
    4
    Dido defines the term "middle of the road." To her credit, she has never given in to pressure to follow current music trends for commercial success and has insisted on releasing albums when she feels ready, but these days, she's really paying for insistence to do things her way. No Angel and Life For Rent gave her amazing sales, although singles sales and positions weren't so hot. But the public can take one big break and one duplicate of the last album. But Dido has kept the same musical style for four albums in a row and has taken big breaks between all four of those albums. The public haven't got time for that. They moved on and her third album barely hit 1 million copies, a stark contrast to her record breaking previous efforts. Unsurprisingly, her latest release has suffered the same fate. Any experimentation she has ever done is only in one or two tracks and anything a bit out there has been relegated to the deluxe edition bonus tracks. Lead single, Let Us Move On really benefited from a guest rap from Kendrick Lamar, bonus track All I See benefited from a guest rap from Pete Miser and the club remix of Everything To Lose turns it into something amazing. Aside from these little acts of experimentation, final track, Day Before We Went To War is a beautiful ballad and the only classic Dido track that wasn't boring. Dido's lack of challenging herself and her years of effort to make an album that sounds the same as the last one makes me wonder how passionate she is about music. She'd better buck up her ideas if she still wants a career after this because if this is the best work that she can produce after a 4 year labour, she'll be forgotten about real soon.… Full Review »
  2. Etaipalombo
    6
    I don't know a lot of artists who sounds the same either at the studio and the stage, but I'm sure that Dido is one of them. The new album is ears-pleasing as usual, but suffers from heterogeneity of songs. Some of them sounds great, others you'd rather to fast forward. Dido keeps singing with the same passion as in her earlier releases, she's dedicating herself to every word she sings, but sometimes it seems that the lyrics downgrading her vocal skills. Still, this album is well produced and nice to have in your own discography for late starless nights (5 Songs Per Artist Blog)… Full Review »
  3. alain
    7
    It is a nice, pleasant, entertaining record that lacks many of the textures of her previous work. The opener, No Freedom, is strong, acoustic Dido which slightly echoes Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry. It is a simple but appealing guitar-based tune on which Dido’s vocals amazingly shine. This acoustic formula may have been more suitable for the title track as the synthesizer making the sound of breaking news at the beginning may take one’s attention away. Lyrics at first seem to lack strength, still when Dido climaxes and says: “I know what it’s like to be passed over...” mixed with those great “whip beats” and a very beautiful string arrangement, one could think: “Wow, this girl really wants to get away!” On Let Us Move On, one can hear the piano setting the scene for an almost broken heart. The melancholy and regret evoked by Dido’s voice over good beats, dark-sounding piano and electronic ornaments creates a great track. While Dido sounds fantastic on the three previous tracks, she sounds dull on Blackbird. Even when the lyrics are poetically beautiful, the voice is exaggeratedly distorted. In her previous work, Brion's cupboard echoed her voice perfectly. However, her vocals on Blackbird sound as if the echo button had gone crazy. Something similar happens when listening to Loveless Hearts. This and the repeated question “Why do I bring you love when all you give me back is pain?...” make one want to go right to the next song. So if Blackbird makes one suffer, relief is found in End of Night. It is a fresh, danceable track which gives the Dido listener 4 minutes of fun. Finally on Sitting on the Roof of the World, Dido amazingly shines again just like she did on No Freedom. A simple, guitar-based, enjoyable, magic song. The first 6 tracks, excluding Blackbird, and the wonderful Day Before We Went to War where Dido does justice to her visual lyric writing proves that she has something appealing to offer while the rest is just pleasant tunes which will probably go with the flow and on which a more acoustic Dido may have done it better.… Full Review »
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