Songfacts®:

• Dido wrote this song to help reconcile her depression. It was the mid-'90s and she was in a panic over her management and publishing contracts she signed that she came to regret. Feeling trapped, she stayed in the house and ran through her conundrum over and over in her head. All of this is reflected in "Slide," where she sings:
  
  Staring at the same four walls
  Have you tried to help yourself?
  
  "Don't slide," she tells herself in chorus, trying to pull herself out of her funk. She eventually did, getting her music career back on track and signing with Arista Records in 1998.
• Dido wrote "Slide" with Paul Herman, a British songwriter who also co-wrote her hit "Thank You." They connected through Dido's brother, Rollo Armstrong, who discovered Herman through one of his demo tapes and brought him in to play guitar with his band Faithless, which Dido performed in as well.
• "Slide" is a track from Dido's debut album, No Angel. Released in the summer of 1999, it sold about 300,000 copies over the next year, but after Eminem sampled the track "Thank You" on "Stan," it went boffo, selling well over 10 million worldwide.