SONG OF THE DAY

“Jar of Hearts” by Christina Perri (sin­gle, iTunes release, 2010).Written by Christina Perri, Bar­rett Yeretsian, & Drew Lawrence.

WHERE I HEARD IT

This sea­son of So You Think You Can Dance, which I’ve now totally quit watch­ing because Alex “Freak­ing” Wong was per­ma­nently injured and, hon­estly, there’s no point to watch­ing that com­pe­ti­tion with­out him. He was the high­light of every week, and would most cer­tainly have won the show. You’re not a fan, so this para­graph just really bored you, I get it. But if you even remotely appre­ci­ate dance as an art form at all, youtube Alex Wong. He’s a mas­ter. Any­how, I found this song because of SYTYCD…you can watch the song being danced to here if Dick Clark pro­duc­tions hasn’t already taken the video down. Good work, show and its chore­o­g­ra­phers, for con­tin­u­ally intro­duc­ing new music to our ears and spread­ing the knowl­edge about great artists. You do a lot for dance, sure, but you do a greater ser­vice to music I think because every week you bring artists into the light from their myspace.com or cdbaby or small indie label obscu­rity. Every week! Which reminds me, I should keep watch­ing this show, despite Alex Wong’s untimely depar­ture, so that I can keep learn­ing about great new music. Dang, I almost thought I got two hours back in my week there for a sec!

THE BIO (a la iTunes)

Dur­ing the sum­mer of 2010, Christina Perri — a 23-year-old café wait­ress who moon­lit as an unsigned song­writer — went from total obscu­rity to the upper reaches of the Bill­board charts in two short weeks. The Philadel­phia native had moved to Los Ange­les sev­eral years prior, hop­ing to spin her musi­cal abil­i­ties into a record deal. Her brother, Nick Perri, had found platinum-certified suc­cess as the gui­tarist of Shine­down, but Christina’s own efforts weren’t met with such luck. She mar­ried, divorced, and took up a job at the Mel­rose Café in Bev­erly Hills, with music tak­ing a back seat role as she strug­gled to pay the bills. While record­ing an EP, though, she man­aged to con­tact a chore­o­g­ra­pher from the TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Weeks later, one of Perri’s piano bal­lads, “Jar of Hearts,” was used in an episode of the show, and pub­lic demand for the sin­gle pushed her to release “Jar of Hearts” inde­pen­dently. Over 100,000 peo­ple down­loaded the song dur­ing its first two weeks, help­ing it crack the Bill­board Top 40. ~ Andrew Lea­hey, Rovi Corporation

WHAT I HAVE TO SAY

This song is incred­i­bly sim­ple, just basi­cally going up a scale with the same piano repeated in the back­ground. The melody is noth­ing. The vocals are okay but not out­stand­ing. What gets me are the lyrics, so that’s why I pass it onto you. I’ve included the lyrics below, and hope you appre­ci­ate their poetry today.

LYRICS

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Here’s the song: