Like every girl with a portable CD player in the early aughts, I, too, had a poster of Vanessa Carlton on my bedroom wall. It was one of those fold-out ones tucked in the CD case for her 2004 album Harmonium, the follow-up to Be Not Nobody, which is home to the single that still follows her, “A Thousand Miles.” Right now, pop culture is obsessed with nostalgia, which should mean there’s no better time to have been a 2002 Grammy-nominated artist for "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year." Over fifteen years later, though, Carlton is reluctant to rely on her past reputation when it comes to her future. For one, she left A&M records, who were part of her first two albums, in 2005.