808s And Heartbreak
As one of thousands of aspiring singers waiting tables in LA, Philadelphia girl Christina Perri didn’t stand much of a chance of being discovered, but one YouTube clip and three minutes of television later, she was one of the biggest-selling new artists of the year.
Celina Murphy, 26 Jan 2012
Two types of people exist on this giant, spinning orb; those who breathe emotions in and out like oxygen, constantly living in a state of either ecstasy or despair, and those who prefer to just… well, get on with things. I’m expecting not to get along with million-selling songstress Christina Perri precisely because I am of the latter and she is of the former.
Ms. Perri’s tear-jerking debut album lovestrong. and the song that started it all, the almost hysterical ‘Jar Of Hearts’, proved that the 25 year-old is an extremist when it comes to matters of the heart, a fact that Perri is happy to confirm when I call her up in her hotel room in Glasgow.
“From the age of like, four really, I was just like a melancholy kid,” she remembers. “I can’t explain it either because my mom and my brother and my dad, everybody’s chipper and happy and whistling, and I was just like, that weird black sheep kid that would rather be alone and cry and listen to sad songs in my bedroom. It took me until I was older to figure out why I was so pensive and so sad. I was supposed to write little sad love songs! That was my destiny.”
I’m not sure which of us is better off, Perri or myself. On the one hand, I’m not likely to find myself sobbing uncontrollably in the supermarket because I’ve spotted a lonely avocado or a solitary cuppa soup. On the other, no-one wants to listen to my break-up song, which would be titled, ‘Well, That’s A Shame’.
Speaking of break-up songs, the pseudo-genre to which Perri owes her fame, I don’t really do them, unless Chaka Khan or Diana Ross counts.
“You don’t?” she exclaims, clearly baffled. “Maybe everybody’s different. I know for me, I just want to listen to the saddest song ever. I don’t know what it is that I find comforting about that. I eventually get to Diana Ross, but I definitely don’t mind the pulling of the heartstrings.”
Of course, it’s her ability to tug hard on those strings that made Perri one of the biggest-selling new artists of last year. Here’s how it happened; a friend uploaded a video of Perri singing to YouTube, a talent agent saw it, got in touch and pretty soon ‘Jar Of Hearts’ was being used on So You Think You Can Dance? The track clearly struck a chord with America’s heartbroken population, who bought over two million copies of the ballad once it had been rushed onto iTunes.
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