Vanessa Lee Carlton (born August 16, 1980) is an American pop singer, songwriter, and pianist best known for the single "A Thousand Miles" from her platinum-selling debut album Be Not Nobody (2002). Carlton's second album Harmonium (2004) was a commercial failure, which led her to part company from her record label, though she still holds a small dedicated fanbase. She currently resides in San Francisco with her producer-boyfriend Stephan Jenkins (lead singer of Third Eye Blind), and her third album is slated for a spring 2007 release.

Carlton was born in Milford, Pennsylvania to Ed Carlton, a pilot, and Heidi, a piano teacher; she has two younger siblings, Gwen and Edmund. She is of Scandinavian descent on her father's side, and of Russian Jewish descent on her mother's. Although she was not raised in any religion, she has referred to herself as "Jewish" and said she was "spiritual". She began playing the piano as a toddler, and received tutoring from her mother. After returning from Disneyland at the age of two, Carlton played "It's a Small World" on the piano. This event inspired Carlton's mother to expose Carlton to various classical composers such as Mozart and Eric Satie. She went to ballet school in New York City beginning at age twelve. The stress and rigid training in the ballet lessons proved too much for her, and she chose not to become a ballerina after graduating from the academy.

She attended Columbia University and performed in bars and clubs all over Manhattan. Carlton met Peter Zizzo at a singer-songwriter circle and a few months later, Zizzo invited Carlton to his studio to begin recording a demo with instruments accompanying Carlton's piano and vocals. Three months after recording the demo tape, Carlton was signed onto Interscope Records where she began recording the album Rinse, which was never released. Rinse has twelve tracks, including songs that were reworked for her debut album Be Not Nobody, such as "Ordinary Day", "Rinse", "Pretty Baby", "Twilight", "Interlude" (later entitled "A Thousand Miles"); songs that remain unreleased in any form, except for Internet bootlegs (which exist for at least seven of the twelve tracks), such as "All I Ask" and "Superhero"; and one song, "Carnival", which was later re-recorded under the title "Dark Carnival" for the Sony PlayStation game Spy Hunter 2.

Carlton's debut album, Be Not Nobody, was released in April 2002. It included the hit piano pop single "A Thousand Miles", which reached the top five of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The song was a featured highlight in the film comedy "White Chicks." Follow-up singles "Ordinary Day" and "Pretty Baby", however, were less successful. In 2003 Carlton received Grammy Award nominations for "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year" for "A Thousand Miles". Carlton also provided the descant vocals for the Counting Crows' cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi", recorded for the film Two Weeks Notice.

Carlton provided backing vocals for a song on anti-folk singer Kimya Dawson's 2004 album Hidden Vagenda. Carlton's second album Harmonium was released in November 2004, and yielded the single "White Houses", which preceded the album. Harmonium debuted outside of the top thirty on the Billboard 200 album chart, and both album and single (which reached number eighty-six in the U.S.) were considered commercial failures. Her 2005 collaboration with the Italian rock and blues singer Zucchero along with Haylie Ecker on violin for the song "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" was moderately successful, reaching the top forty in France.

In a post on her official site's forum, Carlton suggested to her fans — who often refer to themselves as "nessaholics" — that she would be releasing a third album in 2006, although she added "most people will know it as my second!" due to a perceived lack of commitment to Harmonium (or indeed any artistic empathy) at her current label. During her Harmonium tour, Carlton debuted three new songs in June 2005 at The Living Room in New York City: "Put Your Hands on Me", "This Time", and "The One". While on tour with rock singer Stevie Nicks in 2005 and 2006, Carlton also debuted the songs "Best Behavior" and "All Is Well". In September 2005 Carlton entered the studio with producer Linda Perry to record her next album, and in May 2006 a studio version of "This Time" premiered on the website PromoSquad, which led to speculation amongst fans that it would be the album's lead single.

Ashton Kutcher Punk'd Carlton in November 2004 during a rehearsal for a performance on The Tonight Show. In 2005 Carlton completed the New York City Marathon and donated the pledge money she collected to Musicians on Call, a nonprofit organization that brings live and recorded music to patients' bedsides.

Carlton was named by Jane magazine in the U.S. as one of the "eleven people you'd most like to see naked." She posed for the magazine's July 2005 issue.

Vanessa Carlton's boyfriend/producer is Stephan Jenkins of rock band Third Eye Blind. She previously dated musician John Mayer.