The video for Vanessa Carlton's Top 10 song "A Thousand Miles" shows the 22-year-old songstress at the keyboard of her piano - and not just any piano, mind you. This magical, elegant instrument floats from the garage in her video home through the neighborhood streets, picking up speed as it travels out onto the open highways with Carlton at the helm, alighting at several scenic locations and eventually gliding down the streets of New York City, past skyscrapers and back home again.

The vision is a bit surreal, but a reminder of where Carlton is at this point in her life. MTV championed the video well before the late April release of her debut album, Be Not Nobody which recently went platinum, and earlier this year, Rolling Stone magazine hailed her as one of "Top 10 Artists to Watch in 2002."

In October, Carlton embarked on her first headlining tour of North America, playing a variety of venues beginning with New York's Irving Plaza. "It's pretty neat to have people at your shows, finally, that are there to see you," Carlton says. The Gibson/Baldwin Player talked to Vanessa by phone during her stopover in Liberty, Mo.

You started to play the piano at age 2. Did you learn to play by ear?

Yeah, basically that was how I got my start on the piano. I would hear things and then play them, so it's always been part of my training.

And then you took classical lessons from your mom?

Yeah, she would kind of incorporate my instincts and she realized that I liked to have a lot of freedom as I played things. So she taught me how to read music, and then let things kind of go from there. And she'd guide me along now and then, to make sure my technique was good; she'd fill in the holes on my technique. I've always been one to kind of interpret the music in my own way, and she always gave me that freedom.

How did your parents inspire you musically?

It was a home that was music-friendly. Aside from the fact that they were both musicians - even though my father was a pilot, he loved to play the fiddle - there was music playing in my house all the time. Art is celebrated in my home, and it's considered to be extremely important. There was never any feelings of, what are you doing wasting your time? If the TV was on, and one kid was watching TV and one kid was playing piano, they'd be like, turn off the TV and let your sister or let your brother play.

Did you have certain recordings that influenced your playing?

I listened to a lot of [Aaron] Copland when I was younger, and a lot of Mozart sonatas I worked on in those really important development years in terms of my playing. I think that it's a combination of Copland and Mozart that have really influenced the way I play the piano in terms of my hand patterns and the dynamics.

Do you model yourself after any other piano artists - was there anyone there who influenced you?

No, I think that I was always excited to find an artist who played the piano and was pop at the same time. Piano music that would actually get on the radio, that was always exciting to me. I just always had my own way of doing things, and it was more of a release to hear an artist that played the piano as opposed to a huge influence.

What was the big turning point for you, when you knew you wanted to be a piano artist and composer?

I was studying ballet for years in New York [at the School of American Ballet] and it was my last year, and I started skipping my ballet classes to sing songs and to write music. I didn't write my first song with lyrics until I was 17, so before that I would compose pieces on the piano. The turning point was when I combined lyrics with my piano playing.

Would you say the piano is pretty central to your songwriting, then?

Of course, it's completely based around the piano.

Do you approach your craft by writing your music first or your lyrics first?

I always start out with the piano, with the music, and that inspires the rest of the song. It's the core, the base of everything that I do.

What did you learn about yourself as you were recording your first album?

To always trust my musical instincts. I learned that I'm very particular, and it has to be a certain way or I won't be able to sleep at night. I kind of discovered myself as a producer and an arranger, which I'm looking forward to discovering more on the second record. It was a very intense journey, even in terms of fighting for your own beliefs with the people around you, and really making your voice heard. It really helped me kind of grow in that way.

Did you feel a lot of responsibility as the coproducer?

No, I wanted as much responsibility as possible. Responsibility doesn't scare me at all. It I'm going to release something and put my name on it, I want to know that if it fails, at least it was my vision.

What kind of things inspired you to write as you were making this album?

Well, I'm still writing, I write all the time. I think my personal experiences, but just living my days and whatever goes on between sunrise and sunset. Kind of interpreting the people around me and interpreting myself, discovering the way I think as I grow up, and discovering the way other people think. And what makes sense to me and what doesn't make sense to me, it kind of all culminates in a song.

Are there particular themes for you that keep resurfacing in your songwriting?

A constant theme is my struggle to feel peace. It's hard for me, I can be very intense about things, and it's to a fault, really. I have a hard time absorbing the moments that I'm in, or enjoying them as much as I should, because I'm constantly worried about something else. There are always forces that are stirring within me, so I think that the only time during my day really when I feel that peace is when I'm sitting and kind of purging those feelings.

Why did you choose to do a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black?"

It was kind of a last minute thing. We were in the studio one night, and I wanted to sing it, and I didn't plan on it being on the record, but it was a really magical thing that we had, and I love the feeling of it and I loved the color that it brought to the album. I thought it deserved to be on there. And I loved the way it was interpreted. That was really interesting.

What was the most challenging thing for you about making the album?

Really the most challenging thing was getting it together on time, because MTV jumped on "A Thousand Miles" in January. [The album] was released April 30. Everything started happening in January so there were months that people were waiting for the record, and I was just freaking out that we weren't going to get it out on time.

Do you have any advice you would give to up-and-coming pianists?

Yeah, if you're playing an instrument, or [doing] anything else in your life, and it suddenly becomes . . . you feel obligated to do it, or you feel like it becomes a task or you're doing it for somebody else, and you're not dying to do it all the time, then it's not something that you should be doing. I learned that about myself as a dancer, because it didn't work out. Piano-playing is really special, and I would say just constantly search for your voice and allow yourself to grow also, and never limit yourself in one certain way and not allow yourself to transcend categories.

Did you ever gravitate towards any other instruments?

I play a little guitar, but not really. I play great cow bell.

Will that make its way into any of your recordings?

Sure, why not, I'm very experimental!

Are you doing anything special to celebrate the platinum status of your album?

I'm going to take a little break after this tour and go horseback riding in Arizona. It's the best thing in the world.

How do you feel about being compared to the other singer-songwriter gals that are out there right now? There's a lot of comparisons in the press.

I think that it's been helpful in a sense, because their success - the success of the other young musicians around me - definitely helps to bring attention to what I'm doing. But at the end of the day, the goal is to transcend the trend, and I'm working on being able to come out with a sixth album, a seventh album, and still be as relevant and as vital to my fans as I am now. That's the thing - when the trends are done it's like, who's left? I'm constantly looking forward and realizing that what's going on right now is helpful, but when it's done, it shouldn't matter if it's going on or not.

They don't really tend to categorize men in the same way.

Yeah, it can be frustrating. If you really pay attention to the music, it's just a completely different way of writing and recording and playing - what I do, compared to the other musicians that I get compared to. I can write my albums by myself in a room, and I don't need a team of people around me. And I wouldn't want a team of people around me, because it kind of skews my point of view. It's a very pure process for me, and I don't like anyone else to be part of the songwriting process. That's where a lot of differences start to happen between a lot of the other artists and me.

You don't see yourself in a cowriting situation at all?

Never. Unless it's with another artist that has a real point of view. A lot of these cowriting situations, it's with writers that are these ghost writers, these shadow writers, and they're good at coining a couple good hooks. These artists have a team of them.

What does your album title mean to you, Be Not Nobody?

It's kind of neat, coming out of my shell, but at the same time, it means freedom. I like to say that it's more of a phrase that resonates a feeling to me, it resonates with an emotion as opposed to some literal phrase - obviously, grammatically it's struggling. But in terms of what it means to me, which is kind of a declaration of independence, it's very powerful. Writing this album, putting it together, this whole journey has been kind of a coming of age thing, and kind of a first step to the rest of my life.