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.

Your Song Sucks: What Troubles Me About Katy Perry's "Birthday"

This party apparently had two cakes.

Maybe I’m biased. Though I find Katy Perry aesthetically pleasing, I find most of her musical catalog aurally repugnant. In fact, I can’t summon a single song of hers that I can enjoy. So already I approach her single “Birthday” with skepticism and disgust after recognizing her vocal work from the get-go. She’s a capable singer, I’ll grant her that. But even though she collaborated with four other writers, the song couldn’t be any less boring or formulaic.

The lyrics aren’t subtle in the least: “Pop your confetti / Pop your perignon / So hot and heavy / ‘Til Dawn,” and later, “So let me get you in your birthday suit / It’s time to bring out the big balloons.” This isn’t to say you shouldn’t write songs about sex; Prince established a music empire solely on lyrics of lovemaking, and it’s one of the oldest subjects sang about since we discovered that our vocal cords make pretty noises. But at least make a half-assed attempt to be clever about it. The word “party” is used in that vague way that suggests more than cake and ice cream, Also, the fact that the speaker wants the subject to “pop” two different things that produce two substantially different substances makes me concerned for both parties.

The speaker is also ambiguous about her relationship to the subject. One might be quick to assume that they’re in a girlfriend-boyfriend pairing, but the opening lines suggest something far more complicated: I heard you’re feeling / Nothing’s going right / Why don’t let me / Stop By,” and later, “You know that I’m the girl that you should call.” The second passage suggests that the subject has a harem of female acquaintances that he could select from. Why would a girlfriend tell her boyfriend he can call he when he's in Frowntown? But the speaker insists that she has what it takes to turn his proverbial frown upside-down.

In spite of the speaker’s good intentions, the chorus makes me want to fall on my sword:

Boy, when you’re with me

I’ll give you a taste.

Make it like your birthday everyday.

I know you like it sweet,

So you can have your cake.

Give you something good to celebrate.

So make a wish.

I’ll make it like your birthday everyday.

I’ll be your gift

Give you something good to celebrate.

It reads like the death rattle of a metaphor. Here she uses the birthday analogy in almost every configuration uniform to the North American tradition of the birthday party. We get cake eating, wish making, gift giving—the three primary pillars stand firm even though it feels like Miss Perry and her writing collective are somehow picking up the pillars and beating me senselessly with them. Maybe that’s why the song falls apart.

After the vaguely Daft Punk-sounding bridge, Miss Perry says, “Happy Birthday” in a way that sounds like an attempt to emulate Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” It’s not true enough to the original to make me confident that it is in fact what she’s going for, but I’m distracted by it. I’m bothered by it.

I find the melody problematic. In spite of the song’s upbeat disco tempo, we’re left with a dull and ultimately unsexy background to supposedly sexy lyrics. The way she sings the last two words on certain lines like “’Til Dawn” and “’Stop by” feels discordant with the melody as it doesn’t quite keep up the song’s rhythm. This happens enough times that it’s noticeably awkward and feels as though they just gave up when they got to the final lines of those stanzas. The notes also sound as though they don’t offer the temporal finality that we expect from the end of a stanza. But it’s been a while since I took a music theory class so I can’t eloquently or accurately articulate what it is about the song that makes it so boring, so you’ll just have to cope with that. In a way, it looks constructed with the sort of ease of Lego, yet looks like something a three-year-old might put together with a Duplo brick: it technically fits but looks clunky and unsophisticated, and is less fun to step on.