Betty Curse
Betty boo: Be afraid, be very, very, very, very afraid. Because you are about to be cursed by the scariest new chick on the chopping block, a 2,000-year-old-plus she-vampire who hails from the seventh circle of hell, and won't stop until she's sucked every drop of blood from your shrivelled corpse - or at least seduced you into buying her new album, God this Hurts, due out in August on Island Records. "I like dressing up. I enjoy loneliness. I like absinthe," says this 21st-century musical Medusa. "I'd like Nick Cave to sing to me as I bled to death." Betty's favourite bands are The Cramps, The Birthday Party, The Damned, The Cure and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. Ask her to describe herself in one word, and she'll answer, "dead".
Dead 'Pool: Betty Curse is actually 19-year-old Goth girl Megan Burns, who hails from the more earthly location of Liverpool. From a very early age, Megan didn't fit in with the living, so she retreated into her own dark world, populated by ghouls, demons, skeletons, Edward Scissorhands and Edgar Allen Poe. Her dad left when she was three, and this exacerbated Megan's painful shyness and pathological sickliness. At school, she found herself excluded from the hoodie-wearing cliques, left alone to brood and act weird in her Goth regalia. Her grandmother, however, saw something special in young Megan's hellfire eyes, and sent her to drama school, hoping she could finally come out of her shroud and fearlessly expose her talents in full daylight.
Zombie here now: Megan's first break came when she was cast in a small British movie, Liam, in 2000. This earned the teenage star an award at the Venice Film Festival, where she was spotted by one Danny Boyle, who immediately asked her to star in his cult zombie flick, 28 Days Later. "I can't believe how lucky I've been," says the girl who's usually only happy when it rains. "So many people try their hardest for it and I've never really fought for it. I think it comes more naturally if it's just a passion within you rather than an aspiration."
Rocky horror: Megan's true passion, however, was for making dark, depraved, poptastic goth music, and so she hooked up with even scarier rock svengali Steve Ludwin, who helped young Megan channel the spirits of Siouxsie Sioux, Christina Ricci and Bride of Chucky, and transform herself Frankenstein-like into Betty Curse. "With my obsession with death, and Steve's fascination with the macabre," says Betty, "we take that and write about it with pop sensibility." Her debut single, Excuse all the Blood, out now on Island, is inspired by the suicide note left by the singer of Norwegian death metal band Mayhem. It's a double A-side single with Met on the Internet. Betty's currently on tour in the UK, so lock up your corpses.
