2002–2003: Be Not Nobody Carlton met songwriter/producer
Peter Zizzo at a singer-songwriter circle and was invited to his studio to record a demo. Three months later she was signed by
Jimmy Iovine to
A&M Records and began work on an album of her songs, to be titled
Rinse. This album was never released, but a few tracks were reworked for
Be Not Nobody. One song, "Carnival", was re-recorded as "
Dark Carnival" for the video game
SpyHunter 2. Other tracks from
Rinse were "Interlude" (later known as "
A Thousand Miles"), "Rinse", "Ordinary Days" (later known as "
Ordinary Day"), "Twilight", "Pretty Baby", "All I Ask", and "Superhero". The first five of these were included in her first album,
Be Not Nobody, together with a cover of the Jagger/Richards song "
Paint It Black". Other unreleased tracks from her early demo tapes include "Faces", "Meggie Sue", "Little Mary", "Burden", "Wonder", "Devil Dance", and "Last Fall". After hearing Carlton's demo of "A Thousand Miles",
A&M president
Ron Fair organized recording sessions and produced and arranged the song himself. "A Thousand Miles" became a hit, peaking in the top five on the
Billboard Hot 100, and went on to become the sixth-most-played song of the year. It garnered
Grammy Award nominations for "
Record of the Year", "
Song of the Year", and "
Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)." Fair produced the rest of the album. The tracks were recorded in Los Angeles at IGA Studios, Santa Monica; Henson Studios, Hollywood; and Royaltone Studios, Burbank. Carlton played piano and sang vocals; other instrumentation included a backing band, a 60-piece orchestra and sitar on "Paint It Black".
Be Not Nobody was released in April 2002 and appeared at number five on the
Billboard 200 albums chart with 102,000 units sold. It went on to sell more than two million copies worldwide. Two more singles, "
Ordinary Day" and "Pretty Baby", were released. Carlton toured the US in 2002 to promote the album, opening for the
Goo Goo Dolls and
Third Eye Blind, before headlining her own tour at the end of 2002 and touring Europe in 2003. Carlton collaborated with other artists before the release of her second album. She provided the
descant vocals for the
Counting Crows version of the Joni Mitchell song "
Big Yellow Taxi", played piano for Italian singer
Zucchero, along with
Haylie Ecker on violin for the song "Indaco Dagli Occhi Del Cielo", and provided backing vocals for "Moving On" by
Kimya Dawson for her album
Hidden Vagenda.
2004–2005: Harmonium Carlton's second album,
Harmonium, was released in November 2004.
Harmonium debuted at number 33 on the
Billboard 200 and descended quickly after, selling fewer than 150,000 copies by February 2006, which was considered a disappointment after her successful debut. The album was produced by
Stephan Jenkins from rock band
Third Eye Blind, and included darker themes than those on her debut album. Carlton and Jenkins had met and begun a relationship in mid-2002, when she and Third Eye Blind, of which Jenkins was lead singer, were on tour together. After seeing Carlton perform live Jenkins offered to produce her music, and according to Carlton they decided very quickly that they had the same vision for the album. Carlton credited Jenkins with helping her to withstand pressure from record label executives who wanted to influence the recording. She said later that her label "wasn't very happy" about the decisions she made during the making of the album. Carlton stated that
Harmonium contained more of her own aesthetic than
Be Not Nobody. A single, "
White Houses", released to radio in late August 2004, peaked at number 86 on the
Billboard Hot 100.
MTV censored and later banned the single's music video because of a controversial lyric in the song that refers to sexual intercourse. Carlton attributed the censoring of the song to the
Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy involving
Janet Jackson which had occurred earlier that year. She embarked on a four-week North American concert tour in October and November 2004, with an opening act of
Low Millions, and performed a second tour in March and April the following year, with
Cary Brothers and
Ari Hest as supporting acts. Carlton left A&M Records in mid-2005, feeling that her nonconformist attitude would create problems for her at the label. While in the studio she wrote songs with
Linda Perry and
The Matrix. In the same period she collaborated with the Italian singer
Zucchero Fornaciari featuring his song "Indaco Dagli Occhi Del Cielo" (cover of the well known "
Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime"), together with the violinist
Haylie Ecker, in the album
Zu & Co. 2006–2008: Heroes and Thieves in 2008|200x200px In August 2005, Carlton said she was to enter the recording studio the following month with producer Linda Perry, with whom she had previously collaborated after executives at A&M Records sent her into the studio to record a re-release single for
Harmonium.
Heroes & Thieves was released and greeted with generally positive reviews. It debuted at number 44 on the U.S.
Billboard 200, "
Nolita Fairytale" was the first single and peaked at number 26 on
Billboard Adult Top 40 Tracks chart. To promote the album, Carlton embarked on the Haunted Club Tour, from November 2 to 24, 2007. Second single "Hands on Me" was sent out to radio in February 2008 and reached number 30 on
Billboard Adult Top 40 Tracks chart. One song on the album was "Spring Street", based on
Spring Street in
SoHo in
Manhattan. Carlton parted amicably with
The Inc. once her promotional commitments to
Heroes & Thieves had passed. She contributed a stripped-down version of the song "More than This" to
Songs for Tibet, an album compiled in support of
Tibet to draw attention to its human rights situation. On September 25, 2008, Carlton and several other musicians and scientists departed on a nine-day trip to the
Arctic Circle. On behalf of the charity
Cape Farewell, they worked alongside researchers for the purpose of studying climate change. Carlton had been a part for
PETA's Animal Birth Control Campaign; she owns a long haired
dachshund named Lord Victor.
2009–2012: Rabbits on the Run and Hear the Bells Carlton's fourth studio album
Rabbits on the Run was released on July 26, 2011, under
Razor & Tie, the third record label she signed with, and received praise from music critics who particularly noted its "strikingly personal" subject material. Before recording the album, Carlton was unsure whether she wanted to make another record or pursue film scoring instead. She chose the title for the symbolism often depicted by rabbits—'time slipping, mind floating'—which is something she has been relating to for the past few years. The album was further inspired by
Stephen Hawking's
A Brief History of Time and
Richard Adams's
Watership Down. The dreamy, fantastical sound of the album was achieved by recording direct to tape and features production by
Steve Osborne. The album's first single, "
Carousel" was released on May 3. On September 19, a tweet on Carlton's account made by her management stated that "I Don't Want to Be a Bride" would be the next single off the record. Via Twitter, Carlton announced that her label would not produce a video for "I Don't Want to Be a Bride", instead producing one for "Hear the Bells". The music video, which Carlton describes as her most revealing to date, was released on June 7, 2012. On November 10, a tweet made by Carlton's management announced the upcoming release of her holiday
EP titled
Hear the Bells on November 21. The EP consists of four tracks, two of which are acoustic versions of Carlton's songs
Hear the Bells and
A Thousand Miles.
2012–2016: Liberman and Blue Pool in 2016|200x200px Carlton announced in late 2012 that she had returned to Real World Studios to commence work on a new album with a theme of
euphoria. On a small tour in late 2013, Carlton teased new songs "Willows", "House Of Seven Swords", "A Matter Of Time", "Take It Easy" and "Unlock The Lock". On February 28, 2014, Carlton announced that she had finished recording the ten-track album, which was to be titled
Liberman, and on April 11, 2014, she reported that
Liberman was being mastered. Carlton's 2014 summer tour supported the Barefoot Wine Beach Project, which encouraged people to clean the beach and keep it safe for wildlife. She performed a track titled "Willows" to promote the events for Fox New York TV, which she said was about the trees she had loved when she was growing up, and she revealed that
Liberman would be released in 2015. In an interview with
CBS News published on June 11, 2014, Carlton described the album as "kind of lush, trippy and beautiful...You really feel like you're falling into a rabbit hole of sounds." She said: "It's pretty short, it's 10 songs. It's meant to be listened to through your headphones."
Liberman was positively received, and like its preceding album, was also praised for touching on personal subjects for the singer. Writing for
The Boston Globe, Ken Capobianco said the material "finds her a long way from 'A Thousand Miles' – and in a better place, artistically." Matthew Schnipper of
Pitchfork wrote that "Carlton's voice is the key attraction on songs [from
Liberman] that register between low-key pop, rock, and folk."
Esquire premiered "Young Heart", a song not expected to be included on the album, which was released as a "pre-release single". On June 15, 2015, Carlton released the song "Blue Pool" through
Nylon magazine's website. The song was included on the
Blue Pool EP, released digitally on July 24, 2015. The songs on the EP were part of a deluxe version of the
Liberman album. On August 3, 2015,
Southern Living premiered the official music video for "Blue Pool". On August 27, 2015,
USA Today premiered the official lyric video for "Willows". The album artwork for
Liberman was revealed, along with its release date of October 23, 2015. Carlton released
Liberman Live on October 21, 2016. The album consisted of eight live tracks recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, while on tour.
2017–present: Love Is an Art and Broadway debut, 2026 album/tour On February 17, 2017, Carlton released another live album titled
Earlier Things Live via her own Victor Music label. It included six songs from albums that were released pre-
Liberman and were played live throughout 2015–2016 on the
Liberman tour. Carlton performed a song titled "Love Is An Art" throughout 2017, and stated that this might be the title of her next album. She began writing songs for the album, her sixth, in June 2017. On December 25, 2018, Carlton posted on Instagram saying that she would start recording the album on January 23, 2019. In March 2018, she began to release one cover song a month while she worked on the album. The first of six songs, a cover of "
Call Your Girlfriend" by
Robyn, was released digitally on March 23, 2018. The second, a cover of
Fleetwood Mac's "
Dreams" was released on April 20, 2018. The third, a cover of
Neil Young's "
Only Love Can Break Your Heart" was released on May 18, 2018. The fourth cover,
Fred Neil's "Little Bit of Rain" was released on June 15, 2018. The fifth cover, "
Needle in the Hay" by
Elliott Smith was released on July 20, 2018. The sixth and final cover song, "Lonely Girls" by
Lucinda Williams was released on August 10, 2018. She released the covers EP as a triple vinyl collection, along with the
Liberman Live and
Earlier Things Live EPs, on November 23, 2018. Speaking of her first time performing on Broadway, Carlton said: "It was emotional for me to get through the show the first time, it’s a lot of work. And it was so exhilarating. And it just kind of worked out. I just cried at the end. ‘I did it! Now I have to do it 79 more times. How is this going to happen?'” Mark Kennedy of
The Seattle Times believed that the role marked "another fascinating turn" in Carlton's career.
Love Is an Art was released on March 27, 2020. Carlton revealed via Twitter in January 2021 that she planned to re-release the album in March 2021 with new songs and demo recordings from the album's studio sessions. In 2023, she went viral when a puppet sang her famous song "A Thousand Miles". The puppeteer, Ben Howard, was recognized by Carlton when he brought the puppet to one of her concerts to perform. Howard said, "She really seemed to love it." In 2024, Carlton and her husband John McCauley of the band
Deer Tick created the score for the film
Wish You Were Here. Directed by Carlton's longtime friend, actress
Julia Stiles, it was released in January 2025. In October 2025, while opening for
Stevie Nicks, Carlton debuted a few new songs and announced that a new album,
Veils, would be released in 2026. On November 11, 2025, she released the first single from the album, titled "Animal". The album
Veils was released on April 17, 2026 via her own label, Liberman Records. Carlton will embark on a world tour later that same month in support of the album. ==Personal life==