Vanessa Carlton

Vanessa Carlton is an American singer-songwriter and pianist whose 2002 single "A Thousand Miles" became one of the most recognizable piano-pop songs of the early 2000s. Born on August 16, 1980, in Milford, Pennsylvania, she has released six studio albums spanning major-label pop and independent folk-leaning work.

Carlton's mother was a piano teacher, and she began playing at age two and writing songs by age nine. She was accepted to the School of American Ballet in New York City at age 14 but left after two years, then attended Columbia University briefly before signing a publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group at age 17.

Her debut album Be Not Nobody was released in April 2002 on A&M Records, and lead single "A Thousand Miles" reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100, earning three Grammy nominations including Song of the Year and Record of the Year. The song was later featured in the 2004 film White Chicks.

She released Harmonium in 2004 with co-producer Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, then moved to The Inc. for Heroes & Thieves in 2007. She left the major-label system after the 2011 album Rabbits on the Run, recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, and put out Liberman (2015) and Love Is an Art (2020) on independent labels. Her song "White Houses" reached the top 20 of the Billboard Adult Top 40, and she made her Broadway debut in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in 2017.

The name Vanessa was coined by satirist Jonathan Swift around 1713 for his friend Esther Vanhomrigh, blending the first syllable of her surname with her first name.