What Christina Perri Believes

Head or Heart was released earlier this month via Atlantic as the follow-up to Perri’s debut, 2011’s Lovestrong.

Perri revealed that in order not to psyche herself out when working on the mix of pop and piano-rock tunes, she pretended that nobody was going to listen to her sophomore album. Of course that didn’t happen, with Head or Heart peaking at No. 4 on the Nielsen SoundScan albums chart and the single “Human” currently sitting pretty at No. 11 on the Adult Pop chart.  

Another stand-out song is her super cute duet with Ed Sheeran, “Be My Forever.” And then there’s the track, “I Believe,” which she wrote with her 15-year-old self in mind. Perri said that performing the tune at an event for the non-profit organization To Write Love On Her Arms convinced her to include the tune on Head or Heart.

Pollstar chatted with Perri one afternoon a few weeks ago before she took the stage in Minneapolis.

What was the process like of working on Head or Heart compared to recording your debut? There’s that saying that you have your whole life to write your debut and then just a few years to write a sophomore album. Did you feel that pressure?

You know what? That’s what happened but I didn’t feel any pressure. But really, I had to try my hardest not to because it was coming in all different ways, between everyone telling me about the pressure or me just hearing stories about it. It was almost unavoidable. So I had to completely trick myself, to be quite honest, and pretend that absolutely nobody was going to listen. I also did not have a deadline so that made it really easy to not trip [and think], “Oh, God, I have to have all these songs written by a certain date.”

Because as a writer … some people phone it in or do it really quickly but I feel like my creativity is the first thing to hide if I’m afraid. I don’t think I would have written a second album if I felt all that. I’m very, very sensitive. So I just kind of finished my first album cycle, which ended in October 2012 and I told everyone, “Great, I’ll see ya when I see ya. I’ll call you when I write a song.”

And what happened was two weeks after I got home, I wrote the first song on the album, “Trust,” and it inspired basically the entire album. I decided I’d call it Head or Heart, I knew what I wanted to say, I knew that it would be basically just the truth.

And then that way, I wouldn’t feel weird if I was telling the truth. And so I started to write. I mean, I had some ideas from the tour because I was on tour for 27 months. I just write songs constantly. You know, most of them are terrible, but the ones that I really, really love, I put into the pot. I wrote by myself for three months and then I wrote with other songwriters for three months and in May 2013 I had 49 songs that I liked to choose from. And then … I went into the studio with a couple different people, ended up staying in London for eight weeks, actually … about an hour outside of London, in the middle of nowhere. I ended up staying there and doing nine songs with this [producer] named Jake Gosling, who set the tone for the whole album. So then when I came back to L.A., did the last four songs … and [it was] mixed and mastered, and then all of a sudden it was one year and 78 days.

So, [compared to] the first album, to answer your question – the difference is massive. I mean, I did the first album in 33 days, I had no idea what I was doing; I was just kind of thrown into this crazy world, backwards. And this time around, I took my time, I planned it out, I was part of every single thing you hear and I fell in love with it. That’s the big difference – I fell in love with this album and I loved making it, which is why my memory of it is so delicious.

You mentioned that you wrote songs for three months by yourself. What’s your writing process like? Do you write better in the morning or at night? Do you listen to other music or do you have to have silence?

You know, there’s no method. No method whatsoever. I’m literally like on an airplane, singing into my shirt, like with my phone in my shirt. Or I’m sitting at my piano at home. Sometimes when I have to sit down to write, I don’t write anything. But sometimes when I have to sit down, when I have to find an instrument, that’s when the songs really, really come. When they kind of force themselves out are I think the best songs I’ve ever written.

… When we had the collection of 49 songs, I was sitting with my whole label and it was like this big scary day, like seven hours of listening to music at the president of Atlantic records, in his living room. With my A&R guy, with my management and it was just a crazy day. And I’m sitting there and we’re listening one by one, and making notes, and it was terrifying! But what I loved was the 13 songs that I chose for this album were what I think are pure songs, where I wasn’t trying.

Even if I did a writing session, it was like I came in that day with something so crazy that it just happened. Or like an emotion … that I had to write about it, no matter if it was by myself or with someone. The song was going to get written that day. And so I separated those [13] songs so easily. Everyone thinks that that process might be difficult, but I thought that it was very clear. Some were [from] songwriting sessions, some were just like “Oh yeah, today you’re going to write a song at 6 o’ clock.” I’m like, “Oh, cool. … Sure, maybe.” And then the other ones were genuine songs. They’re the ones that rose to the top so quickly that it was the easiest decision of the whole process.

It sounds like the process of recoding Head or Heart had a lot of intuitive moments, from deciding the title to picking the song titles, lots of eureka moments.

Constantly. Yeah, I mean … I feel like if I was a [member of a] band I probably would have cried less or drank less chocolate milkshakes but I was really emotional because I’m going like, “Well, OK, what do I think?” And I’m bouncing ideas off of myself and I had to trust myself so strongly.

And it’s funny because the whole theme of the album is trust, but in matters of love. So when it comes to matters of career, I have no problem trusting my gut. For some reason I just skip head and heart and go right to my gut. I’m like, “Does this feel right?” Cool. “Does it make me nauseous?” OK, no.

During an appearance on “The Today Show” you mentioned that the album is “definitely very me.” Would you say that most of the material was from your personal life?

Yeah. So the only experience that I ever had writing a song about something that I [didn’t go] through was “A Thousand Years,” because I’m not a vampire. But I do love that love story very much and so I felt very connected to it. But every single thing I’ve written before and after that, including album two in its entirety, are based on true experiences in my life. I love that in album two I grew a little bit as far as I don’t just write about relationships with other people on this album, there are four songs that are about maintaining a relationship with myself. Like figuring out how to be me on the planet and be OK with that. There’s a song about how I moved to California from Philadelphia and finding the courage to chase my dream. There’s a song I wrote at the end of the album to the 15-year-old version of me. So I definitely kind of grew up a little bit as far as writing goes, but it’s still all stuff that I experienced. I mean, I wrote it in the past three years but it’s pretty much my whole life that I used as a reference in some of these songs. And it’s really specific relationships too. I mean, it’s like, “Oh, did we date in that time period? Ohhhh. (laughs) It probably made it on the album.”

But you know what? I think that’s why people believe me. Because if I was singing about anything I didn’t go through, I just don’t think anyone would feel what I feel.

I read that the last track on Head Or Heart, the song “I Believe,” was written for an event put on by the charity To Write Love On Her Arms. How did that song come to be?

Well, that’s one of my favorite stories about the album. That song, I didn’t plan on putting on the album. … So, in the middle of writing the album I had to do the [To Write Love On Her Arms] show and I was like, well, I haven’t been touring and everybody who came to my (past) shows has already seen me play all these songs (from the first album). I would love to do something special for this audience because I believe so much in this charity. And that’s the song that I told you I wrote for the 15-year-old version of myself. Because to me, when I was 15, I would have loved to have an organization like To Write Love On Her Arms to remind me that I’m not alone in feeling really uncomfortable. That whole charity is all about hope and all about being honest and telling someone – doesn’t matter who it is – how you really feel inside. And so I wrote that song for that event, with obviously me in mind as a young girl. And what happened at that song, it was such a special moment and everyone was singing these affirmations at the end and singing along with me. It had such a giant reaction on the internet, when someone put it up on YouTube, the live version, that I was like, “Well, OK! That’s making the album.” It had such a special moment that it was undeniable for me … and so here it is, it’s the last song.

That sounds like the perfect song to wrap up the album.

Yeah! (Quotes song lyrics) “This is not the end of me, this is the beginning” – it’s a cool line to finish with. 

Upcoming dates for Christina Perri:

April 25 – Louisville, Ky., Mercury Ballroom     
April 26 – Indianapolis, Ind., Deluxe     
April 28 – St. Louis, Mo., Plush St. Louis     
April 29 – Nashville, Tenn., Cannery Ballroom     
April 30 – Atlanta, Ga., The Buckhead Theatre 
May 2 – Lake Buena Vista, Fla., House Of Blues
May 3 – Saint Petersburg, Fla., State Theatre     
May 6 – Dallas, Texas, House Of Blues     
May 7 – Austin, Texas, Emo’s     
May 9 – Dallas, Texas, House Of Blues     
May 10 – Lawrence, Kan., Granada Theatre     
May 13 – Tempe, Ariz., The Marquee     
May 14 – San Diego, Calif., Humphrey’s Concerts By The Bay     
May 16 – Las Vegas, Nev., House Of Blues     
May 17 – Los Angeles, Calif., The Wiltern     
May 20 – San Francisco, Calif., The Fillmore     
May 21 – Sacramento, Calif., Ace Of Spades     
May 23 – Portland, Ore., Crystal Ballroom     
May 24 – Seattle, Wash., The Neptune    
May 25 – Seattle, Wash., The Neptune     
May 26 – Vancouver, British Columbia, The Vogue Theatre