Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile's third album, Give Up The Ghost, unveils her talents in their truest form. After two albums and non-stop touring, she has let her guard down and offers her most candid recording to date. If the phrase "give up the ghost" most often refers to death or dying, it can also be used to describe the passing of stages in life, of transformation. The recording of Give Up The Ghost offered new experiences including working with the likes of Elton John, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers multi- instrumentalist Benmont Tench, drummer Chad Smith and Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls, all of whom contribute to the album. After debuting with her self- titled album in 2005, the Washington State-bred Carlile saw her fanbase mushroom with her sophomore disc, The Story, in 2007. Among the growing legion of Carlile fans is Elton John. "Brandi has an amazing voice," he says. "She's a great songwriter and has a tremendous career ahead of her." Proudly, Carlile says that John - who duets with her on the song, "Caroline" - played a key a role in her evolution as an artist: "I've been listening to country and western music my whole life and I was totally immersed in Grand Ole Opry culture, wherein the entertainers are usually not the ones who wrote the music. But when I was 11 and discovered Elton John, I realized that performers do write and perform their own songs, and I immediately went out and got a keyboard and started writing." When they recorded together, "I was just overwhelmed by the years, and by the influence that somebody can have on another person's life without even knowing it." Her second album, The Story, upped the ante considerably, selling 313,000 copies and rising to No. 41 on the Billboard albums chart, and boasting songs like the title track and "Turpentine." Several of Carlile's songs have appeared in commercials and on televisions shows such as Grey's Anatomy. Along the way, she has toured with the likes of Ray LaMontagne, and Sheryl Crow, who raved about Carlile's support performances online: "She has the most amazing voice I may have ever heard. Soulful. Country. Perfect in every way-and propelled by taste." With all that encouragement and experience under her belt, when Carlile set out to make Give Up The Ghost, she did so with ample ambition: "When we recorded The Story, we set up our instruments with one drummer, like a stage, and we treated the record like a show, and we recorded that performance. This is this is the first time we treated something like a record. We really dug in and created an environment specifically for each song. We didn't go halfway on anything."