“Life For Rent” – Dido

I haven’t ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I’m not in love
But it’s not as if I mind
that your heart ain’t exactly breaking

It’s just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

I’ve always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what’s happened to that dream
Cos there’s really nothing left here to stop me

It’s just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

While my heart is a shield and I won’t let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won’t even try
Well how can I say I’m alive

If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
Cos nothing I have is truly mine.

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Dido (singer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong, known as Dido(/ˈdaɪdoʊ/, born 25 December 1971), is a British singer and songwriter. Dido attained international success with her debut album No Angel (1999). It sold over 21 million copies worldwide and won several awards, including the MTV Europe Music Award for Best New Act, two NRJ Awards for Best New Act and Best Album, and two Brit Awards for Best British Female and Best Album. Her next album, Life for Rent (2003), continued her success with the hit singles “White Flag” and “Life for Rent“.

Dido’s first two albums are among the best-selling albums in UK Chart history, and both are in the top 10 best-selling albums of the 2000s in the UK. Her third studio album, Safe Trip Home (2008), received critical acclaim but failed to duplicate the commercial success of her previous efforts. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the song “If I Rise“. Dido was ranked No. 98 on the Billboard chart of the top Billboard 200 artists of the 2000s (2000–2009) based on the success of her albums in the first decade of the 21st century.^[7] Dido made a comeback in 2013, releasing her fourth studio album Girl Who Got Away, which reached the Top 5 in the United Kingdom.

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Life for Rent

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Life for Rent is the second studio album by the British singer-songwriter Dido, released by Arista Records on 29 September 2003. The album was produced by Rollo Armstrong and American songwriter Rick Nowels. Work on the album began in mid-2002. It was certified 7× Platinum by the BPI and sold over 12 million copies worldwide, making it the fourth best selling album worldwide of 2003. The album became the seventh best-selling album of the 2000s on UK, making Dido the only singer to have two albums in the Top 10 list.

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• The title track of Dido’s sophomore album, this was released as its second single with some success reaching the Top 10 in the UK, Ireland and Italy.
• According to Dido, the meaning of ‘Life For Rent’ is that “my life isn’t really my own, I only rented it for a while, but if I don’t manage to buy it, to own it, then nothing of what I think is mine is really mine.”
• The song was used to soundtrack pivotal moments in US TV series Smallville and Nikita.
• Life for Rent was the top selling album in 2003 in the UK with over 2 million sales.
• Dido recalled the story of the song to Canada.com: “I wrote ‘Life for Rent’ in America,” she said. “I had basically run away from England at that point, for various reasons — I was being chased around a lot by the press and also I had just ended this relationship and stuff — and wrote pretty much the whole album while I was in America. This song was one of the first songs I wrote there and it still resonates with me. There’s a line in there that says I want to live by the sea — well I still do and I still don’t.”

(Source: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=31508)

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The song, “Life for Rent” was an instant runaway success and it hit the top of the charts worldwide, with good reason – it appealed to a wide range of audience globally and it is beset with a deep, underlying meaning – a meaning so deep that it will make you stop for a moment and really think about your life and circumstances. “Is my life for rent?” That is the essential question to be answered here and the crux of the matter is to be found ensconced in the lyrics of the song itself. So, join me and let’s try to gain greater insight into the hidden meaning behind this song.

The protagonist of the song leads an entirely nomadic existence. She is a perpetual vagabond – constantly on the move. She never settles down anywhere long enough to call that place, “home.” Even her personal relationships are transient and almost fickle and superficial in themselves – she is constantly, “in and out” of other people’s lives. She falls in and out of love, as a matter of course. Her life has been such that her existence has not had any great impact on the life of any other person or persons – be it family, friends or even a lover. She does not have many expectations in her life – she takes what comes her way and tries to be satisfied with it.

She reasons that after all, nothing in life is for keeps – Life itself is for rent. She realizes that she needs to make the most of her life, while she is still young and while she is still able to. She knows that nothing that she has or will have will ever be truly her own – when Life itself is for rent then all material luxuries fall in the same category.

 

 

When Life is for rent, learn to “buy.” So, take the inevitable plunge – go out and discover the world. Take a chance on love. Learn to trust your gut instinct as far as your career choices go. Make plans for your future even if you’re not sure where you are headed. Do not fear failure. Live the way that you want; learn to be the person that you want to be. Life is just too short for anything else.

 

She takes some time to reminisce on how she had always wanted to live by the seaside. She dreamed of traveling the world and living a more simple and settled life. She wonders what happened to all these dreams. She never chased her dreams and now she is forced to accept her lot.

If you have a dream, it is your bounden duty – to yourself – to make every possible effort to realize that dream because what is life without a dream for a better future?

Think about these lines – it all starts to make a lost of sense now, doesn’t it?

“If my life is for rent and I don’t learn to buy
Well, I deserve nothing more than I get
’Cos nothing I have is truly mine.”