Carlton: Out of the league

Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles became an anthem of 2002. Here's a brief interview.

It's hard to imagine a more pop debut than Vanessa Carlton's.

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Her piano-infused A Thousand Miles became an anthem of 2002, garnered her three Grammy nominations and helped her sell more than 2 million copies of Be Not Nobody, her first album. But as she releases her sophomore set, Harmonium, Carlton prefers to define herself as out of the mainstream.

"I am kind of an alternative to kind of the very popular hip-hop stuff and other really mainstream pop artists," says the 24-year-old singer-songwriter, sitting in a studio at New York's famed Hits Factory. "I'm an alternative to the Simpson girls." Carlton has done well by defining herself as the alternative to commercialise pop; with her first album, the brunette was cast as one of the emerging anti-Britneys, female artists who wrote their own material, played their own instruments and rejected the role of pop's oversexed vixen.

Carlton hopes to cast herself next as a career artist, instead of the hot singer of the moment.

Q: You were among a rising group of female singer-songwriters considered an alternative to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Do you feel you were lumped in with other artists?
Carlton: I did, but I thought that the trend of that time probably helped propel me forward. When you're part of a trend, it tends to be easier to kind of break through, and at this point now I'm just kind of standing on my own and it feels nice to be one of the few people that are doing what I am attempting to do. I'm not really scared by it at all. To walk the bold path is not something that I'm not afraid of, and if I'm releasing a song to radio and it's the only song on radio that sounds that way, that to me is a plus as opposed to me being concerned that I'm not fitting a preconceived mold.