Vanessa Carlton, "Hands On Me"

Song: "Hands On Me"
Artist: Vanessa Carlton
Album: Heroes & Thieves
Written by: Vanessa Carlton/Stephan Jenkins
Year: 2007
Key: E♭m
Classification: SF2 (with a brief lapse into SF1)
Lyrical content: true love is eternal; the Dalai Lama would want us to have sex
Where used: Verse, chorus



I honestly would have thought that we, as a nation and a culture, would be over "A Thousand Miles" by now. But by gum, there it is, in approximately a third of all the commercials and previews for romantic comedies (the other two-thirds being taken up by "Unwritten" and "Suddenly I See") still, to this day. Haven't those tinkly piano cascades been played out and squeezed dry? It would seem the world believes that they haven't. Heroes & Thieves doesn't offer anything quite so egregious, though Carlton does manage to find room for the line "I'm a sycophantic courtier with an elegant repost." (That's the way "riposte" is spelled in the liner notes, so: [sic].)

To the extent that there ever was anything Sensitive and Female about the SFCP, it was probably inevitable that Carlton would eventually grab hold of it. She leans pretty heavily on it throughout but gets points for making the verse and chorus entirely different from one another despite having the exact same progression underneath both. It's still afflicted by Carlton's tendency to write lyrics like a pretentiously artsy high schooler, but it's bright and catchy. That's practically a triumph right there.

Full song: Vanessa Carlton, "Hands On Me"
Listen to the SFCP clip for this song