Your Song Sucks: Christina Perri's "Jar of Hearts"

I'd like to believe there's a good reason why I haven't heard the song "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri. Maybe it was an underground hit that got scooped up by the muzak at my place of work. Maybe I'm just out of touch with popular music. But perhaps there's a more cosmic reason out there, that perhaps the elder gods had willed that the song's dreary piano work would not penetrate my ear drums until a certain day. And after the day, hear it again, and again, and again.

As with all songs that trouble me on an existential level, I watched the video in which Miss Perri--not to be confused with Miss Perry--with her tattoos and her two-tone haircolor wearing a dress that looks like a torn wedding dress, looking proper edgy. They put together a "dark" video here, but "dark" like Twilight is dark. She drops black rose petals and they start to fall from the sky. The man of the video is like a vampire. But there's some ballet-like dancing so it's art.

All abandonment of subtlety aside, I find Perri's singing style distracting. The way she hits her r-sounds sound as if she's fighting off a pirate accent. She also opens her jaws to sing like I do to eat a sandwich--like a snake dislodging its own jaw. It's incredible. But I digress.

The song probably wouldn't suck as bad if it wasn't for its godforsaken chorus, composed of poetry too bad for a college creative writing course. The chorus begins with an indignant inquiry: "And who do you think you are? / Runnin' round leaving scars / Collecting your jar of hearts / And tearing love apart." "Jar of hearts" is a vivid image, but it's almost too angsty. Also, it's a phrase that really brings out Perri's strange r-sound annunciation that I find so grating.

And then we get this piece of lyric that I had to suffer a few more listens to confirm that I heard what I thought I had: "You're gonna catch a cold / From the ice inside your soul." Two lines that when first heard gave me the identical sensation of a kick to the groin with the pain cramping into the bottom of my stomach. Given the maudlin tone of the song, the line seems out of left field. There's no room for humor in this song, so to sing this line straight-faced is a monumental achievement in itself. This very line falls into that category of "poetry that could use a couple more workshops."

To her credit, if she writes her own stuff, Christina Perri should be applauded since all pretense of artistry in popular music seems to be shifting solely to the performer side of things. But part of being an artist is welcoming criticism, preferably from people who have read a book.