Sara Bareilles puts her ‘Heart’ into new album

“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. “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 boosted 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’s grace under the onslaught of stardom and her personality — part sugar, part spice, attracting 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,’’ says Scott Carter, Bareilles’s product manager for “Kaleidoscope Heart’’ at the label.

Bareilles is slated for a flurry of TV appearances, including “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’’ (Friday), a performance on “Today’’ (next Tuesday) followed by an interview (Sept. 8), and “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson’’ (Sept. 21).

The TV circuit is an awkward but necessary part of the promotional whirl, Bareilles says. “It’s a lot of hurry up and wait, but that’s just TV in general because there are so many mechanical factors they are trying to take care of and coordinate,’’ she says. “I mean, the audience is sitting there waiting to be told that they can applaud.’’

Bareilles was a fixture on the Los Angeles bar and club scene for years after she graduated from the University of California-Los Angeles, and she’s still most invigorated by playing live. The Obamas are fans — Bareilles performed at both the G20 Summit and the White House Easter Egg Roll — and she was on the roster for six Lilith Fair shows this summer — including a performance at the Comcast Center last month — an experience she treasures.

“That was so magical; I feel like I went to female songwriter school,’’ she says. “There was so much negative press about Lilith Fair, and it makes me a little angry. The essence was totally intact. The crowds were small in some of the markets, but we played huge shows of 10,000-15,000 people.’’

On Sept. 25, Bareilles will start a 30-city headlining tour in Portland, Ore., including stops at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and Webster Hall in New York. The size of the venues gives Bareilles a chance to have a full band backing her — her previous headlining tour was acoustic — and include some theatrical stage design elements, she says.

Coming off the success of “Love Song’’ was daunting for Bareilles, who says she took procrastination to an art form while preparing to write “Kaleidoscope Heart.’’ (In her bio for the album, she admits that she spent a significant amount of time shopping for throw pillows at Target in lieu of putting notes on paper.)

But everything clicked once she sat down with producer Neal Avron, who has previously worked with Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park, and Weezer. “I looked at his discography, and I was like, ‘Fall Out Boy? I don’t see how I fit into this at all,’ ’’ she says. “But Neal and I met and it felt like a good fit. He really listened. He has no ego, and I love that quality in someone.’’