After years of keeping quiet, Dido finally explained that she did NOT name her son after the song “Stan” that she collaborated with Eminem on.
In 2000, Eminem was tearing up the music charts (and offending people all over the place) with The Marshall Mathers LP, and an unexpected side effect of his fame was the rise of Dido. The singer debuted in 1999 with her hit “Thank You,” which was featured in a film before she ever met up with Eminem. Later, Eminem would ask Dido’s permission to sample her song, and “Stan” was born.
Dido later starred in Eminem’s music video for the song. Years later, after Dido named her only child Stanley, fans immediately thought she had done so because of that collaboration with Eminem. However, it turns out that wasn’t Dido’s intent at all.
Dido Did Not Name Her Son After Eminem’s “Stan”
It’s understandable that fans think Dido named her son after Eminem’s famous song; many headlines reported it, including around the time Dido’s son was born in 2011. The Hollywood Reporter titled an article with the claim, suggesting Dido named her first child “after Eminem collaboration.”
Understandably, fans assumed the only reasonable explanation for Dido naming her son Stanley was as some kind of honor to Eminem. After all, the song was not a story about a pleasant character named Stan; the video also featured Dido as Stan’s pregnant girlfriend.
At the time, fans weren’t even sure whether Dido was actually pregnant or if she was wearing a fake belly for the music video. As Stanley is her only child, it’s obvious now that she wasn’t pregnant in the video; her son was born over a decade later.
Years later, Dido finally spoke up about her son’s name, clearing the air of any rumors.
“When I was a teenager, I was with my mate, I remember sitting on a wall, and they were like, ‘What are you going to call your kid?’ and I was like, ‘Stanley.’ Bizarrely, when I met my husband, that was the name that was his favorite for different reasons.”
What might be most interesting to fans is that not only did Dido not name her child after her collaboration with Eminem, but that she still chose the name after working on the video. As it turns out, the experience of filming the music video was also intense for Dido — but it never put her off naming her son Stanley.
Dido Had A Hard Time On The Set Of “Stan”
Fans of Eminem will recall that in the song “Stan,” the character of Stanley begins by bleaching his hair blonde, while his pregnant girlfriend tries to bust into the bathroom to use the toilet.
Stan storms off, favoring his obsession with Eminem over his girlfriend, and eventually ties her up in his trunk, planning to drive them both off a bridge.
While the initial release of the music video didn’t show all the footage, Dido recalled the project a few months later, revealing that although they weren’t aired on MTV or other major music networks, some scenes of “Stan” included Dido gagged in the trunk.
Much of the footage was censored (such as Stan’s verses about drinking and driving and killing his girlfriend), and that included Dido’s screams from the trunk. Censored or otherwise, “Stan” is one of Eminem’s most popular YouTube music videos to date.
While it may not have been that dramatic for Dido in real life, she didn’t have a good time on the set. In an interview with The Guardian, Dido explained that she was “actually tied and gagged” in the music video.
She also experienced an injury that probably helped make her scenes more authentic, albeit traumatizing.
“It was pretty hairy. I don’t like not being able to breathe and the gag hurt my mouth. And I managed to smash my head on the car jack. There was this massive crunch and I just burst into tears.”
Of course, working with Eminem was a highlight for Dido, even if the set wasn’t all that cozy.
Dido Is Still Friendly With Eminem Today
Back in 2001, right after she worked with Eminem, Dido revealed just how nice he was. Despite Eminem’s reputation (and the assumption that “Stan” was in part autobiographical and one of the songs Eminem wrote about his ex-girlfriend Kim), Dido found him “lovely.”
“People confuse him with the characters in his songs. it’s like Stephen King. He does some scary s***, and it’s warped beyond belief. But it’s not real. I got close enough to Eminem to know that he’s not misogynist or homophobic.”
Though “Stan” was more than 20 years in the past by then, Eminem brought Dido onstage with him during a 2021 performance in London. He called her “someone who is very important to me,” before inviting Dido onstage to accompany him on “Stan.”
