Haunted by Beauty

Haunted by Beauty
The Observer - UK
She co-wrote that ubiquitous song with James Blunt in Los Angeles four years ago, and judging by the strength of anti-Blunt sentiment at the moment, Ghost ...

Is James Blunt a gift or a curse for his co-writer?
Killian FoxSunday
April 16, 2006
The Observer

About a year, says Amanda Ghost when asked how long it will be
before interviewers stop pestering her about 'You're Beautiful', a number one on
both sides of the Atlantic. She co-wrote that ubiquitous song with James Blunt
in Los Angeles four years ago, and judging by the strength of anti-Blunt
sentiment at the moment, Ghost might find it harder than she thinks to rise
above her association with the song.

At her band's recent showcase in Soho,
she was doing her best. The 29-year-old Londoner has a distinctive voice and a
talent for writing songs in the vein of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. Thanks to
the Blunt song she need never work again but its success in the States has
generated interest in her abilities. Her EP, 'Blood on the Line', is out next
month. She will be contributing to the soundtracks of two forthcoming films,
Perfect Stranger, a thriller starring Bruce Willis and Halle Berry, and Eragon,
a sci-fi fantasy. And she recently signed an unlikely deal with Def Jam, the US
hip-hop label, and has been fielding requests to write for Beyoncé and Janet
Jackson. 'I told them I know nothing about R'n'B. But they don't care. All these
hip-hop guys are blown away by 'You're Beautiful'. Their advice to me was, don't
change - just do what you did before.'

She first met Blunt in London in
2002, and when she discovered he had never heard of Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell,
she handed him a stack of albums and sent him off to do his homework. They met
again at her house in LA and he sang her a verse from a song he had been writing
that day about a girl he glimpsed on the underground ('called "Beautiful Eyes"
or something'). What followed took an hour, 'sitting around the swimming pool
with guitars, smoking dope'. Ghost wrote the words and melody of the chorus, got
him to sing falsetto and made the song more downbeat. 'In fact,' she says,
'maybe that's why it's done so well - because it has the light of him and the
miserableness of me. All the best songs have a bit of melancholy in them.'
Ghost has had reason enough to be melancholy. Everything seemed to be
working in her favour when she released her first album, Ghost Stories, on
Warner Bros in 2001. 'It was well received in the States, then Warners got
sold.' She was kept on for another three years, a limbo period in which nothing
much happened.

It wasn't all disaster though. She got to know Joni Mitchell
and Stevie Nicks, who encouraged her. And her friendship with Boy George, for
whom she has also written hits, is a bonus. But will Ghost ever become anything
more than the woman who wrote the chorus of 'You're Beautiful'? 'I hope it's not
the footnote of my career,' she says as a flicker of anxiety crosses her face.
'No, that would not be good.'