Sara Bareilles is a very nice woman who broke through to music's mainstream by writing songs that sweetly and eloquently tell people to fuck right off. Don't be fooled by the video to "King of Anything," the lead single off her sophomore album for Epic, "Kaleidoscope Heart," due Sept. 7. Sure, that's Bareilles, 31, wandering through a park in a gauzy tutu and singing with a generous smile; she's already attracted upwards of 1 million views on Vevo. But much like the monster success of "Love Song," a track off her first Epic album, "Little Voice," "King of Anything" is an anthem to sassy assertiveness dressed in a lilting singer/songwriter sheen.

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"It was the last song I wrote before we went into the studio, and I was at the point where I started sharing the music with my inner circle and started getting feedback," she says. "I remember having a very vivid realization of, 'Oh, I forgot that this was a part of it. Everybody gets to tell you what they think about what you do.' I could tell I was getting defensive. That song was a little bit of a pep-talk song-and that's exactly what 'Love Song' was."



"Love Song," released in 2007, sold 3.2 million digital downloads, earned two Grammy Award nominations-one for song of the year and another for best female pop vocal performance-and bolstered sales of "Little Voice" to 985,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Mainstream success came to Bareilles swiftly, and she's the first to admit she was unprepared. "I was so precious about every choice," she says. "I was so guarded, and I don't know that I enjoyed it as much as I could have. There were times where I was so fearful and so anxious about the process: 'Am I doing too much? Am I selling out? Do I look all right?' All those things swirl around in your brain. What I'm here to do is play my music, and I want to be able to enjoy the process this time."

Bareilles' grace under the onslaught of stardom and her personality-part sugar, part spice that has attracted 1.8 million followers on Twitter-are two virtues that Epic is using to promote her second album. "She made a lot of friends with the last album and she's got a lot of partners who love her and go the extra mile for her," says Scott Carter, Bareilles' product manager for "Kaleidoscope Heart" at the label.

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