Hands on Me (Vanessa Carlton song)

"Hands on Me" is a song on Vanessa Carlton's third studio album, Heroes & Thieves (2007), and is the album's second single. According to the website FMQB.com, it was released to mainstream contemporary hit radio in the United States on February 19, 2008 (see 2008 in music). It was mentioned as a possible choice for the second single in a June 2007 article in Entertainment Weekly, which wrote that it "sounded tailor-made for a rom-com trailer coming soon to a theater near you." Irv Gotti, the head of Carlton's label, The Inc. Records, was quoted as saying that the song reminded him of the 1985 film The Breakfast Club.

Carlton debuted the song live in June 2005 at The Living Room in New York City. One of its working titles was "Put Your Hands on Me", about which Slant Magazine wrote:

In fact, the provocative nature of the title—the song is actually more of a spiritual one—might just be the direction Carlton needs to go in to sustain her career. Singer/songwriter/pianists are a dime a dozen and one of the things Carlton's got going for her is her ability to tap into the fact that most teens are more earnest than disaffected, and her willingness to expose that delicate, naked, and unbridled sexual honesty of youth is a much-welcomed reprieve from hip-hop and pop music's hollow commodification of women and sex.

The title was shortened to "Hands on Me" because Joss Stone has a song with the original title on her 2007 album, Introducing Joss Stone.