They tugged, she tugged back

Record execs wanted a hit. Sara Bareilles wanted control. They both won.

When new artists enter the studio to record their debut album, they often morph from human beings into taffy. They are pushed and pulled by their record company's marketing and A&R departments, their management teams, and, of course, their own creative impulses. Sometimes they are stretched into shapes they don't recognize.

Before any of this tugging actually happened to pop singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles - and it did - she wrote a song about it. On "Bottle It Up" the protagonist sticks to her guns as various outside voices implore her to write in a specific style.

"I started that song a million years ago just about the idea of what if I was in that position, what would I say?" says Bareilles (pronounced Buh-rell-is). It is a chilly, late-February night, and the cheerful, olive-skinned brunette, who looks a bit like a pre-fame Madonna, is sitting on a tour bus around the corner from the Orpheum Theatre, where she will later open for James Blunt.

Even though the northern California native had long imagined the showdown in the song - one both the subject and Bareilles ultimately won - she never believed it would happen.

"It was very easy for me to imagine myself on a stage playing a piano in front of people, but I never really thought, 'Oh, I could actually do that?' " says Bareilles with a laugh at her less-than-steely determination. "It was just this image I had floating in my head. But I didn't plan past Friday, much less the career path I wanted to take. When I got to college, I studied communications and Italian and wrote music on the side."

It wasn't until Bareilles, who plays a sold-out show at the Paradise Rock Club Tuesday, was studying in Italy and found herself suffering separation anxiety from the piano she had played since childhood that she realized that "music was a part of my health and happiness and sanity."

Her dad FedExed her a keyboard, and she began to focus her energies. She got a band together with some buddies from UCLA and between waitressing shifts began performing and writing in earnest, drawing on varied influences including Fiona Apple, Ben Folds, and Sam Cooke.

Marko Shafer, co-owner and booking agent for the Hotel Cafe nightclub in Los Angeles, remembers hearing about Bareilles long before seeing her and becoming captivated during the first of many appearances at the venue.

"Not only was it the music and her voice that captured me, but it was Sara herself," says Shafer, who also included the singer on the recent Hotel Cafe tour, which has included simpatico artists like Ingrid Michaelson and David Ford, who's opening for Bareilles at the Paradise. "She was just genuinely good people, always glowing. Even now, with all of her success, she is still that same smirking, funny, humble girl. And she still returns my calls," he says with a laugh.

She had a similar effect on VH1, which chose to spotlight her in its "You Oughta Know" campaign.

"She's not a one-hit wonder, she's a real artist," says Rick Krim, executive vice president of music and programming for the cable network. "She came up and did a little thing where she played an acoustic set for us, and people who hadn't heard her before were like 'wow.' "

Epic Records had a similar reaction and signed Bareilles in April 2005. And then the tug-of-war commenced.

"I think sometimes women in this industry get underestimated and people will look to the man in the room and ask for his opinion," Bareilles says of making "Little Voice," her debut album, which has gone gold since its release last July. Even though she credits many of her collaborators with open minds, her frustration with the outside tinkerers was sometimes high. "Especially when [the debate] has to do with your art. This fire started to grow inside of me during that time, and I really wanted to scream at the top of my lungs just to be heard."

Then, of course, when the inevitable happened and the label told her the album needed a single, Bareilles caved. But she did so in her own defiant fashion.

The song she wrote was "Love Song," a top-10 radio hit, which is widely being interpreted as a tune about a disintegrating relationship as, Bareilles sings, over a deceptively jaunty piano riff, "I'm not gonna write you a love song/ 'Cause you asked for it/ 'Cause you need one."

"Of course, when I wrote it, I was scared to turn it in because I thought it was so obvious, black and white, a big fat [expletive] you [to the record company], and nobody knew!" she says with a laugh. "I had to tell them!"

Bareilles is not blind to the irony that in doing what Epic requested and having a big fat hit to boot, in the grand scheme of things the label wins. But because she loves the song, she doesn't feel creatively compromised. And considering its ubiquity - thanks to early support from iTunes and television spots for Rhapsody - there are no hard feelings on either side. It turns out that, unlike a romantic partner, it's very difficult to hurt a record company's feelings.

"Totally," she says. "They're happy and I'm happy they're happy."

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.