Christina Perri

Perri moved to Los Angeles on her 21st birthday.

According to Perri, she felt terrified of being over 3,000 miles away from her family, saying that she "cried [her] eyes out every day."

Later that year she married and began to produce music videos for a living.

She divorced 18 months later and moved into a small apartment on her own to focus entirely on working on music.

Christina Judith Perri (born August 19, 1986) is an American singer and songwriter.

She graduated from Saint Ephrem Catholic School, and then from Archbishop Ryan High School in 2004 and later attended the University of the Arts.

She taught herself how to play guitar as a 16-year-old by watching a videotape of Shannon Hoon from the group Blind Melon performing on VH1.

In college she majored in communication for a year before dropping out to pursue a music career.

She frequently sang and acted in musical theater as a child.

Perri claims to have learned to play piano and guitar because she missed hearing music being played in the house when she moved away.

According to Perri, whenever she played the guitar or piano, she would sing and "all of a sudden these songs would appear."

She moved back to Philadelphia by the end of 2009; it was during this time that she wrote "Jar of Hearts".

She later moved back to Los Angeles, working as a waitress at the Melrose Cafe during the day and recording at night.

After her debut single "Jar of Hearts" was featured on the television series So You Think You Can Dance in 2010, Perri signed with Atlantic Records and released her debut extended play, The Ocean Way Sessions.

Perri's song "Jar of Hearts" was featured on So You Think You Can Dance during the show of June 30, 2010 in a performance by Billy Bell and Kathryn McCormick.

Perri's friend Keltie Knight passed the song to show choreographer Stacey Tookey, as Perri was unsigned at the time.

Perri and Knight watched the performance in the audience.

Following its exposure on the show, "Jar of Hearts" sold 48,000 digital copies in its first week, debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 63 and reaching No. 28 on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs.

Within a month, it had sold more than 100,000 copies.

The song peaked at number 17 on the Hot 100.

Following the success of "Jar of Hearts", Perri signed a deal with Atlantic Records on July 21, 2010.

She recorded an EP titled The Ocean Way Sessions that was released on November 9, 2010.

Her debut studio album, Lovestrong (2011), followed soon after and has since been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The second single from Perri's debut album, "Arms", was released on March 15, 2011.

She released her debut album, Lovestrong, on May 10, 2011.

It debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 58,000 copies.

In the United Kingdom, Lovestrong was the thirteenth highest selling debut album of 2011.

In July 2011, Perri embarked on her first world tour, the Lovestrong Tour, which lasted for almost exactly a year and consisted of 71 dates.

Perri released her single "A Thousand Years", which appeared on the soundtrack of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, on October 18, 2011.

The song debuted at number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number 31, but has been certified 4× platinum with over 4 million sales in the US alone since.

The song is Perri's most successful single to date.

Perri also gained recognition for writing and recording "A Thousand Years", the love theme for the film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012), which appears on the accompanying soundtrack.

The song went on to sell over 10 million copies in the United States, being certified Diamond, and the official music video reached two billion views on YouTube in December 2021.

She later released her second extended play, A Very Merry Perri Christmas (2012), followed by her second studio album, Head or Heart (2014).

The album's third and final single, "Distance", was released on March 20, 2012.

After recording the lullaby albums Songs for Carmella (2019) and Songs for Rosie (2021), Perri released her third studio album, A Lighter Shade of Blue (2022).

In 2023, she released the albums Songs for Pixie and Songs for Christmas.

Perri was born in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

She is of Italian and Polish descent, and has called her family "very Italian".

She has an older brother, Nick Perri, who formerly played guitar with Shinedown, Silvertide, Perry Farrell and Matt Sorum and cousin Dominic Perri.