Along with Michelle Branch and Nelly Furtado, Vanessa Carlton helped usher in a new era of female songwriters during the early 2000s. Her first single, the Grammy-nominated "A Thousand Miles," was one of the biggest songs of 2002, topping the pop charts in America and cracking the Top Ten in England. None of her subsequent singles came close to matching that song's success, but Carlton continued releasing albums into the following decade, fine-tuning a sweeping, cinematic pop sound that featured her vocals and piano skills at the forefront. Her fourth studio LP, 2011's Rabbits on the Run, became her fourth straight appearance on the Billboard 200. A series of covers she released in 2018 paid tribute to influences such as Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, and Elliott Smith. Raised in Milford, a tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania, Vanessa Carlton took piano lessons from her mother and composed her first song as an eight-year-old. Several years later, she was accepted into the School of American Ballet in New York. Despite being one of the best dancers in her class, she became frustrated with the strictness of the discipline and began to look elsewhere for inspiration, eventually winding up at the piano located inside her Manhattan dorm. Carlton began writing songs again, reaching beyond the classical music of her youth to incorporate influences from pop artists like Tori Amos and Fiona Apple. When it came time to graduate, she halted her dancing career and enrolled at Columbia University instead, where she continued to work on her songwriting. Carlton spent a pair of years waiting tables in Lower Manhattan, living in Hell's Kitchen, and playing open-mike events before signing with A&M Records. Label president Ron Fair took particular interest in her music and agreed to produce Be Not Nobody, which became Carlton's major-label debut in early 2002. "A Thousand Miles" was the album's crown jewel, earning three Grammy nominations and dominating radio playlists throughout the year, while "Ordinary Day" also enjoyed success as a Top 40 hit. Carlton toured heavily in support of the platinum-selling album, sharing stages with bands like Third Eye Blind and Goo Goo Dolls along the way. She also began dating Third Eye Blind's frontman, Stephen Jenkins, and duetted with Counting Crowes on a popular cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi." Carlton began recording her second album in June 2003, with Jenkins serving as her producer, collaborator, and background vocalist. Together, the two spent a year creating Harmonium, a confessional and somewhat dark album that was markedly different from her first record. Public response was different, too, and Harmonium dropped out of the Top 40 during its second week of release. Its performance worsened Carlton's relationship with A&M, leading to her exit from the label the following year. Carlton continued writing songs with help from Linda Perry (a collaborator from the Harmonium sessions) and Jenkins. In a surprise move, she also signed a new recording contract with the Inc., a label owned by rap mogul Irv Gotti. Perry, Jenkins, and Gotti all shared production duties on 2007's Heroes & Thieves, a diverse album that received strong reviews and peaked at number 44 on the U.S. album chart. Jenkins and Carlton ended their relationship soon after the album's release, and her tenure with the Inc. proved to be short-lived as well. By 2010, she had partnered with another label, Razor & Tie, and briefly decamped to the U.K. to record her fourth album. Rabbits on the Run was released the following year and spent a week on the Billboard 200 at number 62. Carlton supported the album with a tour, and a holiday EP called Hear the Bells appeared that November. Over the next few years, she worked steadily on her next album while also starting a family with Deer Tick's John McCauley; the pair married on December 27, 2013 and had their first child in 2015. Later that year, Carlton released her fifth album, Liberman, which was greeted by positive reviews. The album's accompanying tour was captured on Liberman Live, which appeared in October 2016. A live EP titled Earlier Things Live followed in 2017. Over a six-month period in 2018, Carlton released monthly covers that were later collected on Double Live & Covers, a triple-vinyl set that also included Liberman Live and Earlier Things Live. It was issued by Dine Alone in late 2018. Carlton returned in 2020 with Love Is an Art, her sixth album of original material.
© Andrew Leahey /TiVo
23 albums sorted by Bestsellers
Pop/Rock (22)
Ambient/New Age (1)
Dine Alone Music Inc. (14)
A&M (3)
I.G. Records, Inc. - Universal Records (2)
Razor & Tie (2)
A&M (UC) (1)
Polydor Associated Labels (1)
£5.00 to £10.00 (14)
£10.00 to £20.00 (7)
CD£8.99
Love is an Art
Pop - Released March 27, 2020 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
CD£12.49
Be Not Nobody
Pop - Released January 1, 2002 | A&M
Vanessa Carlton probably couldn't have happened without Alicia Keys, but that doesn't mean they sound the same. Both artists are preternaturally talented and write on keyboards, sounding much older than their years. The difference is, Carlton pretty much revels in her advanced years, creating a record that recalls the lush ambition of Keys, but also the soul-searching of Fiona Apple and the precise intricacies of Rick Wakeman. Certainly, this wasn't something she planned to evoke, but the end result is pretty impressive all the same, because it's so well crafted, from both Carlton and her producer, Ron Fair, who doesn't stop her from taking leaps that could potentially prove embarrassing. And there are embarrassing moments on her debut, Be Not Nobody, the most notable of those is a ham-fisted, melodramatic cover of the Stones' "Paint It, Black," which for all the world feels like a single dictated by the studio. That's the nadir of the album, but the rest is charmingly ambitious and often quite accomplished. Take the lead single, "A Thousand Miles" -- as it moves from its solo piano opening to bombastic orchestral-backed choruses, the result isn't overwhelming, it's sweet, multi-layered, and appealing. And most of her debut album follows that lead, often overflowing with soaring strings, intimate pianos, crooned vocals, and pretty melodies, yet it all gels because Carlton shows the potential of a songwriter who can convey her emotions through her songcraft. Sure, some of Be Not Nobody is naïve, but much of it's well crafted and nearly all of it is endearing; it's a rare debut that is quite enjoyable in its own right yet is almost more enticing because of what it suggests that she could do next. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo
Pop - Released January 1, 2011 | A&M (UC)
On her second album Harmonium, singer/songwriter Vanessa Carlton enlists her boyfriend, Stephan Jenkins -- best-known as the frontman of the popular post-grunge band Third Eye Blind -- as a producer and co-songwriter, and his presence doesn't so much alter Carlton's music as give it a sharper, direct focus. Carlton and Jenkins focus on the lush, dramatic teenage angst that made "A Thousand Miles" a big hit in 2002, using that song as the template for a collection of songs that are intimate on a grand scale. Carlton's songs often read like diary entries, dealing with familiar adolescent themes as love and longing, and they sound even smaller when delivered in her thin but appealing girlish voice, but they gain stature when married to their cinematic arrangements, driven by her insistent, circular piano and dressed by light layers of strings, guitars, and vocal overdubs. Where her debut, Be Not Nobody, could sound endearingly awkward, Harmonium is confident and somber, a conscious attempt to be serious and mature that nevertheless still sounds adolescent, largely due to her earnest lyrics and overly ambitious music. Carlton seems to equate seriousness with a lack of hooks, either in the music or the production, so there's nothing as immediate or memorable as "A Thousand Miles," which means there's nothing to lead a listener into the world she sketches on the album -- only those already won over by the entirety of her debut will have the patience to dig deeply into this insular album. That's not to say that this is a difficult album, or even a challenging one -- it's merely a transitional one, with some good ideas and some good songs that don't quite gel as a full record, even if Jenkins gives the album a cohesive sound. Ultimately, Carlton is so intent on being serious, so intent on crafting her songs and sound, that she winds up with an album that's admirable but for its intent, but not its achievement. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo
Hear The Bells
Ambient/New Age - Released November 21, 2011 | Razor & Tie
Liberman
Alternative & Indie - Released October 23, 2015 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
Liberman (Deluxe Edition)
Liberman Live
Miner's Canary
Pop - Released February 21, 2020 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
Heroes & Thieves
Pop - Released January 1, 2007 | I.G. Records, Inc. - Universal Records
Vanessa Carlton spent much of her second album, Harmonium, running away from the pop success that her 2002 debut, Be Not Nobody, and its inescapable hit single, "A Thousand Miles," brought her, choosing to turn inward and confessional. It was an artistic decision that had a perhaps predictable side effect: it didn't sell nearly as much as the debut, failing to crack the Top 30 and generating not one hit single. Given this sophomore slump, it's not entirely surprising that for her third album, 2007's Heroes & Thieves, she's elected for a compromise between the two extremes: embracing the soft pop that brought her fame without rejecting the confessionals that distinguished her second. Some of this is merely straightforward heartache -- after the 2004 release of Harmonium, Carlton parted ways with Stephan Jenkins, the Third Eye Blind leader who produced the album -- but there are other matters on her mind, as evidenced by the mother-daughter saga "Spring Street" and the line about losing her record deal on the album's opening song and single, "Nolita Fairytale." True, she's moved from A&M to the rap-identified The Inc., but this isn't as drastic a change as it seems: the two labels are within the Universal umbrella, and Carlton has hardly gone hip-hop here. Instead, Heroes & Thieves delivers the expected, even more so than her second album: sweeping gusts of piano, sounds that feel dramatic but not weighty. Like on Be Not Nobody, there's a sense of lightness to Carlton's writing -- even if things get a little sad here, they're not gloomy -- which not only makes her accessible, it means that it's as easy to take this as mood music as it is for introspection. That Carlton doesn't quite provide incentive to dig deeper could be called a flaw -- her voice is too sweet and girlish to command, her melodies mellifluous but not grabbing -- but Heroes & Thieves flows easily, and it's a nice return to the strengths of her debut. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo
Rabbits On The Run
Pop - Released June 21, 2011 | Razor & Tie
Shifting to indie Razor & Tie after a four-year hiatus following her 2007 album, Heroes & Thieves, Vanessa Carlton turns inward on her fourth album, Rabbits on the Run. Embracing all the spectral elements that ran underneath the surface of her music, Carlton avoids any of the surging orchestrations or any suggestions of cheer, spending long stretches of the album alone with her piano, and when the arrangements are fleshed-out, they're done so subtly that it often seems as if she's singing alone in the studio. Even if it has the effect of turning Rabbits on the Run into something of an unintentional Tori Amos homage, it's an appropriately austere setting for Carlton's melancholy introspections, ruminations that don't offer any easy way inside. Unlike "A Thousand Miles" or the two albums that dealt with the repercussions of her initial success, this is music made with no audience in mind: it is strikingly personal, to the extent that it suggests that Carlton needs to get this soul-searching out of her system in order to move forward. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo
Future Pain
Pop - Released November 22, 2019 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
The Only Way to Love
Pop - Released January 17, 2020 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
HI-RES£14.99
Alternative & Indie - Released August 10, 2018 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
Pop - Released January 1, 2002 | Polydor Associated Labels
Pop - Released November 9, 2004 | A&M
Alternative & Indie - Released April 20, 2018 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
Nothing Where Something Used to Be
Alternative & Indie - Released April 8, 2016 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Alternative & Indie - Released May 18, 2018 | Dine Alone Music Inc.
Call Your Girlfriend
Alternative & Indie - Released March 23, 2018 | Dine Alone Music Inc.