Merry Perri time
Christina Perri came back to Kuala Lumpur and melted our Jar Of Hearts.
CHRISTINA PERRI is known for her haunting songs of love and loss, but during the KL leg of her The Head Or Heart tour, the petite singer-songwriter started by ... beat-boxing?
“I’m so sorry I did that!” she said sheepishly after that, but based on the deafening cheers, her fans loved it anyway.
Perri, who last came to Malaysia in 2012, then moved on to doing what she does best: blowing the crowd away with her amazing vocals.
“When it comes to love, do you rely on your heart or your head?” she asked at the beginning of the concert, before launching into Trust, a slow song that segued into the more uptempo Shot Me In The Heart, which brought on an avalanche of whoops and cheers.
Perri, who shot to fame with her soulful single Jar Of Hearts, was clad in sparkly stockings and glittery shoes, giving her a Disney princess vibe (albeit a heavily tattooed one).
Alternating between playing the piano, a guitar (that looked oversized on her tiny frame), and a tambourine, she brought down the house at KL Live @ Life Centre on Tuesday with a mix of popular hits like A Thousand Years from the Twilight soundtrack, and Jar of Hearts. Songs from her latest album Head Or Heart, which features her latest hit, Human, made up the bulk of her song set.
“I wrote Human for myself, when I was feeling stuck while trying to write songs for
Head Or Heart,” she said with gut-wrenching honesty. “It was meant to be a personal diary, but I just had to share this with you guys. This is a song about self-forgiveness.”
One would expect someone who writes and performs such sad songs to be sombre onstage, but Perri was a livewire, pirouetting and bouncing to the beat of her songs, much to the delight of the audience.
“I’m so excited to be here tonight!” she said, accepting a toy penguin from one member of the audience. “You are the loudest crowd ever, that’s why I came back to Malaysia!”
The concert-goers, visibly thrilled to be so close to their idol, obligingly screamed even louder. Mostly made up of teenaged girls and lovestruck couples, they sang along to many of her songs, and sometimes almost drowned out what she was saying with shouts of “I love you!” and “Look here!” Not all her songs were sad, however.
Be My Forever, which features Ed Sheeran – no he wasn’t there, his part was performed by Perri’s guitarist – was a cutesy pop love number. “It’s totally possible for me to be happy, guys,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. “It only happened for a short time, but it happened, and so I wrote this song.”
The super motivational Burning Gold was written when she had to move away from home to chase her dreams, she said. “This song is for you guys, it’s about chasing your dreams and not stopping.”
It was the little touches like Perri’s amazing level of audience interaction, that made the concert so successful. The venue was on the small side, but that just added to the intimacy of the whole experience.
Come back soon, Christina Perri, your Malaysian fans definitely wouldn’t want to wait a thousand years before your next concert!
For more pictures and videos, visit www.rage.com.my.