<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Christina Perri&amp;#x27;s debut album, Lovestrong, was released in 2011, and ever since her career has been a whirlwind&amp;amp;#8212;touring with Jason Mraz, her own Christmas EP, and a huge hit with &amp;quot;A Thousand Years,&amp;quot; which was featured on the Twilight soundtrack. And it&amp;#x27;s not stopping there: Her sophomore album, Head or Heart, comes out today, she&amp;#x27;s already had a big hit with the first single, &amp;quot;Human,&amp;quot; and is about to embark on a major headlining tour. Shew! I got a chance last month to chat with her about the new album and much, much more. First off, I listened to the new album and I&amp;#x27;m obsessed! Christina Perri: Yay! Are you? Nobody&amp;#x27;s heard it yet&amp;amp;#8212;I feel like it&amp;#x27;s such a big secret. So tell me about creating Head or Heart. CP: Well, I basically got to take my time. The first album I did in 33 days, so I knew that when I got home from the 27 months that I toured the first album...you know, I had no idea what it was going to be, but I knew that I wanted to take my time. I spent one year and 78 days from start to finish making Head or Heart. I spent six months writing, and I actually wrote the first song&amp;amp;#8212;actually it&amp;#x27;s the first song on the album, called &amp;quot;Trust&amp;quot;&amp;amp;#8212;and I wrote that on October 23, 2012. That was the day I knew I was going to call the album Head or Heart. I knew what I wanted to say, I knew the theme just because it&amp;#x27;s where I&amp;#x27;m at in my life. I was so set up by everyone like, &amp;quot;Oh, the sophomore album is so scary.&amp;quot; And I was like, &amp;quot;Well, what if I just tell the truth? Then will it be really scary?&amp;quot; Because if I&amp;#x27;m not trying to be someone I&amp;#x27;m not, and if I&amp;#x27;m not pretending that I&amp;#x27;ve got life figured out, then maybe this will be OK. That&amp;#x27;s kind of where I went with the head space, and I just wrote about my real-life experiences. I feel like I grew as a writer, and I was able to capture way more dynamics on this album. It&amp;#x27;s not a breakup album. Lovestrong was for sure a breakup album, and this was not. This was a little bit of everything because, fortunately or unfortunately, I went through a bunch of stuff and was finally able to get that down. So the six months that I wrote the album, I wrote about 49 songs, and these 13 were undeniable for me. They rose to the top; I knew I wanted to play them live. I wasn&amp;#x27;t going to put anything on the album that I wasn&amp;#x27;t going to play live, so it&amp;#x27;s a little more fun because I want to have a good time during the shows too! So what was the recording process like? CP: I recorded [the album] for six months. I did nine of the songs with a guy in London named Jake Gosling. I ended up going there to do one song with him, and after doing one song I called everybody and was like, &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m staying.&amp;quot; I stayed for the whole summer in England. I stayed at what I called the Harry Potter hotel, so there was no Internet. That must be good for writing, though! CP: Yeah, in the zone! It was perfect. I had zero distractions, and we got so much work done. It was also just so much fun, and I almost think this album is very British. I also did a couple songs with a guy named John Hill. One of those songs is with Jack Antonoff from Fun, and that song is on Girls. That was really cool because Jack&amp;#x27;s dating Lena [Dunham], and she came to the studio and we had a super-fun day. That sounds like so much fun! CP: Yeah, it was awesome. I didn&amp;#x27;t know she was going to do that. [Back to the album,] the last five songs kind of came together at the end with different people, but the whole vibe was there from Jake. Then I spent two or three months just mixing and matching, and we finished in January. It&amp;#x27;s been really, really interesting. I feel like I&amp;#x27;ve been listening to it now for so long that I&amp;#x27;m so excited for the whole world to hear it now. What was the mood you wanted for this album? CP: I think the biggest thing is the theme&amp;amp;#8212;there is one for sure&amp;amp;#8212;and that is half the songs are &amp;quot;head&amp;quot; songs and half the songs are &amp;quot;heart&amp;quot; songs. I&amp;#x27;m not saying which are which because I want people to have their own interpretation, but the idea is that I have trusted my head and been very guarded and safe and all that stuff sometimes, and that&amp;#x27;s not really worked out. I&amp;#x27;ve trusted my heart way too many times, and that&amp;#x27;s not really worked out. So I proposed this question with the album that says, &amp;quot;Well, which one should you trust?&amp;quot; I believe the answer is both, but I love that I haven&amp;#x27;t figured that out yet. The vibe is definitely all the human emotions that come with love&amp;amp;#8212;the good stuff and the bad stuff. I finally got a little bit of everything. When you were working with Jack, did Lena have any feedback? CP: Yeah! She came in with their dog, and Jack&amp;#x27;s parents were there. He and I had the best time writing that song because he came to my house in Los Angeles like six months before we recorded it, and we only had five hours to hang out. We ended up talking for about four and a half of those hours about all of our weird idiosyncrasies. It was so hilarious because we&amp;#x27;re both really, really dorky. So, literally, we wrote the song when we looked at the clock and said, &amp;quot;Oh my God, we have 30 minutes.&amp;quot; We wrote the song really quickly at my piano, and then six months later I went to New York, we recorded it, and had a blast. We did it in one day, and he was ordering me all of these funny coconut drinks. He&amp;#x27;s just a riot. I could hang out with Jack all day. Then Lena came by and we had sushi. She loved the song. I played her &amp;quot;Human&amp;quot; too, and she really liked that. It was great! It was just a great vibe. They&amp;#x27;re probably the cutest couple I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen in my life. You&amp;#x27;re going on tour with Birdy opening. She&amp;#x27;s known for her amazing cover songs&amp;amp;#8212;do you have a favorite? CP: I love &amp;quot;Skinny Love&amp;quot; like everybody else, I think. That&amp;#x27;s what I heard first, and when I was picking an opening act for my show, I immediately picked Birdy. I knew that it&amp;#x27;d be the right vibe. I love a girl at a piano; I think it&amp;#x27;s just perfect. She sets the tone really nicely for an emotional night of music. You know, we don&amp;#x27;t have costume changes and pyro&amp;amp;#8212;our concert is full-on feels. [Laughs] But it&amp;#x27;s true! She&amp;#x27;s breaking in the States, and it&amp;#x27;s fun and nice. I&amp;#x27;ll try to help her open up a bit. Any tips or wisdom you want to show her while on tour? CP: I&amp;#x27;m so myself onstage. I don&amp;#x27;t know any other way to be, honestly, but I feel like I might be able to help her just open up a little bit. I know she&amp;#x27;s trying to be the opposite, so she&amp;#x27;ll probably help me be more reserved, and I can help her be a little bit more loud. [Laughs] Any super-cool duet you&amp;#x27;d love to do with her? CP: Oh, that&amp;#x27;s a good question! I don&amp;#x27;t know. We&amp;#x27;ll probably come up with something on tour because we&amp;#x27;re going to be together every day. So that&amp;#x27;ll be a fun thing to try to figure out when we&amp;#x27;re out. I don&amp;#x27;t have anything else off the top of my head though. I&amp;#x27;ve been hearing &amp;quot;Human&amp;quot; everywhere! It&amp;#x27;s even the promo for The Little Couple. CP: Yeah, there&amp;#x27;s three shows right now that are playing it. [The feedback has been] really incredible, and it&amp;#x27;s funny because they&amp;#x27;re three totally different shows. One is a detective show, Blue Bloods, one is a sci-fi show called Star-Crossed, and one is The Little Couple. I just love that because that song, as much as it&amp;#x27;s really specifically about self-forgiveness and I could talk all day about what I wrote it about, I just feel like it&amp;#x27;s a general, relatable song because it&amp;#x27;s such a common phrase that we use as people. I love that people are interpreting it in all different ways, so that&amp;#x27;s really rad. What&amp;#x27;s next? Any new projects coming up? CP: I have a song on Lea Michele&amp;#x27;s new album. It&amp;#x27;s called &amp;quot;Empty Handed,&amp;quot; so that&amp;#x27;s really cool. I&amp;#x27;m going to be on tour now for the next two years, so I&amp;#x27;m just excited. I never know what&amp;#x27;s coming. I couldn&amp;#x27;t guess, so I have no idea what&amp;#x27;s ahead of me&amp;amp;#8212;anything is possible. How do you gear-up for a long tour? Anything you do before you go? CP: Oh, totally. The good thing is that I have two weeks of rehearsals in Los Angeles, which is my requirement because most of the day I&amp;#x27;m at rehearsal, but other times of the day I&amp;#x27;m getting myself ready emotionally and physically. I do a lot of SoulCycle, I spin, I get myself ready for a tour diet because there&amp;#x27;s no way to eat whatever you want on tour [or else] I&amp;#x27;ll just feel like crap. So all the healthy stuff has to start now. I also have to pack, which, you know, being a girl is almost impossible, so I&amp;#x27;m planning out my outfits now. I&amp;#x27;m going to start doing more costumes on stage&amp;amp;#8212;we&amp;#x27;re rotating outfits in the wardrobe because I want to pick a different dress every day, which is awesome. But it&amp;#x27;s fun! It&amp;#x27;s all the fun stuff. The promotion is always totally draining, and you never know what&amp;#x27;s next&amp;amp;#8212;but touring I feel way more in control. It&amp;#x27;s like OK, an hour a day I need for me, and this is what I want to eat. I always have to eat pasta before the show with olive oil for my voice&amp;amp;#8212;just the little things that I&amp;#x27;m learning over the past couple of years of what I need to have a great show, and it&amp;#x27;s awesome because now I have the ability to do that. Any specific looks you&amp;#x27;re going for on tour? CP: I&amp;#x27;m not doing any costume changes during the show&amp;amp;#8212;I&amp;#x27;m not really there yet&amp;amp;#8212;but I&amp;#x27;ve just planned my whole show. I&amp;#x27;ve got a white piano, and I got my drummer a white drum, and my bass player a white amp, and we&amp;#x27;re doing this sort of white thing that I think might look really cool with lights, so I think my outfits are going to be white. I think that&amp;#x27;s my theme. Also, a lot of those twinkly, Christmas lights because I love that stuff. It should look really elegant, the show, I&amp;#x27;m excited about it. Seriously, go listen&amp;amp;#8212;it&amp;#x27;s a great alum. And tweet Christina (@christinaperri) how much you love it. You can pick up Head or Heart in stores today or download now on iTunes. Her tour kicks off April 4. For dates, click here! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2014/04/christina-perri-head-or-heart>