Christina Perri’s Manila show promises to be 'a big bowl of feels'
About 30 minutes before Christina Perri takes to the Smart Araneta Coliseum stage on March 5, she and her band would’ve thrown themselves a “big dance party” first and listened to Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke,” Pharrell’s “Happy” and Beyoncé’s “Love on Top.” They’re just some of the 28-year-old’s pre-show rituals because she’s “dorky” that way, she told the Today show last August.
Here are 5 other things to know about the singer-songwriter who gave you the hits “Jar of Hearts,” “A Thousand Years” and “Human.”
1. She has 70 tattoos.
One of her favorites include the one on her chest reading “Tia mo,” which is “I love you” in Italian. (Christina’s dad is from Italy and her mom from Poland but she was born and raised in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.) Another fave is the cheeseburger emoji on her left wrist. She gets a tattoo every time she wants one, wherever she is. She doesn’t overthink it.
She also has the word “Bitten” inked on her right wrist, a homage to “Twilight,” which featured her song “A Thousand Years.”
2. She was married at 21 and divorced at age 22.
When she moved to LA, she fell in love with a video producer and eloped to Florida. “It didn’t make any sense,” she says of the interlude. “I felt like a different person in a different life – I had a house, a dog and a car. I woke up one morning and wasn’t playing music or feeling fulfilled in any capacity and realized I had to make a change. He and I are still friends. We giggle about it now, ‘Remember the time we were married?’ We’ve moved on.”
3. She isn’t a three-hit wonder.
She broke into the scene with the song “Jar of Hearts,” which was used in the US reality show “Dancing with the Stars” when she was still an unsigned artist. Since then, she’s released two albums, 2011’s “Lovestrong” and 2014’s “Head or Heart” and spawned two more hits, including her latest, “Human.” She says, “I want to do this for a long time. And if I want to be Carole King one day, I’m in it for the long haul.”
4. Family is important to her.
Her parents were hairdressers. Her brother Nick Perri is a guitarist who’s played with Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell and former Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum. When she headed back to her hometown last year to play songs from her new album, she was excited to see her “big ass South Philly family”—all 181 of them who went to see her show.
5. Billboard calls her pop music’s Queen of Romance.
“Everyone needs a place to put their heavy stuff,” she tells Billbaord about her propensity to favor introspective ballads . “If I wanted to write about getting drunk in a club, I could, but I tend to write about the heart. When people come to my shows, they have the freedom to feel something, and we're all just a big bowl of feels."
The Manila leg of Christina Perri’s Head or Heart Tour happens on March 5, Thursday, 8 pm at the Smart Araenta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City. Tickets at P5830, 4770, 3180 and 1590 are available at Ticketnet Online.
