Songfacts®:

• This song was written for the film A Life Less Ordinary, starring Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor. But, the name of the film is never mentioned in the lyric, and it really has nothing to do with the movie itself.
  
  Ash lead singer Tim Wheeler hadn't written a song in well over a year when he got the assignment, so he called upon his muse - the "white goddess" - for guidance.
  
  "They sent a script," he told Songfacts. "I was trying to find some way to tie it in, but the film was a love story so it's kind of a weird song for me to have written. But I wrote it about a love song to the muse."
• It was Ewan McGregor who got the band the gig writing this song. McGregor, a big fan of Ash, also had them play at George Lucas' private party when The Phantom Menace was released in 1999.
• The work of poet Robert Graves was an inspiration on this song. Tim Wheeler did a report on Graves in his high school English class and became interested in his work. "He was very interested in Greek and Roman mythology and the origins of poetry," Wheeler said in his Songfacts interview. "The 'White Goddess' is the muse. I could kind of understand it when I was a teenager and songs would come to me out of nowhere - I was fascinated how that happened. Reading The White Goddess gave me a bit of a glimpse into this force outside you that will deliver you inspiration."
• This was released between Ash's 1996 debut album 1977 and their 1998 follow-up, Nu-Clear Sounds. Before the band was signed, it was easy for Tim Wheeler to write, but 1977 foisted the band on tour, where he couldn't create songs. The album went to #1 in the UK, which put a great deal of pressure on him. "A Life Less Ordinary" forced him to start writing again, and what he wrote about was rediscovering his muse.
• This was the first song Charlotte Hatherley played on with the band, which became a four-piece when she joined as guitarist. Hatherley left the group in an amicable parting in 2006.