My Posts: Sort by Decade

Tuesday 23 May 2017

Auditory Abominations: "Jar of Hearts" - Christina Perri


You know, I really should have dealt with all of these songs in February, but then again, it's better I get them off my plate now so I can cover more interesting things later. yeah this is another one where one of the largest problems with the song is how uninterested it is in itself, but alas, that is not the biggest problem with the song. Shall we do another lyrical analysis?

Before we get into lyrics, let's discuss the song. The opening is soft piano and a pitiful attempt at singing, I think she's trying to convey feelings of pain, loss and stuff, but she ends up sing-speaking instead. Also, I think that this may be, one of the worst piano songs I have ever heard in my life, "I Hate U, I Love U" is thus far the worst, but this comes close. The piano is just so soft and it tugs at your heart-strings and it is such a god damn tool. It is so much a tool that it just fades into the background, in fact I think that is actually what they did, they just faded the piano into the background a bit just so we can hear the singer.

The singer by the way does this song no favours. She sounds like she wants sympathy but all I hear is "I went through this, feel sorry for me". Honestly, I think it's really staying when "Detroit Rock City" is a more depressing song than this, and that song was by KISS!

But honestly, none of that really matters, well it does, but it's nothing compared to this songs biggest problem. The lyrics, oh sweet Dio on a throne of fire, these lyrics are sad. Not sad as in they make me cry, but actually knowing that somebody wrote these lyrics makes me sad.

Honestly, the first set of lyrics are, passable. I do like the line "I'm not your ghost anymore" which brings a pretty good metaphor. Then we get the line "I learned to live, half alive" which makes it sound this was a horrible ordeal. This is a break-up song, and we get a line that would sound right at home in "To Hell and Back", which you know had the line "Let them fall face down if they must die/Making it easier to say goodbye".

The chorus is also pitifully weak, I mean "Who do you think you are?/Runnin' 'round leaving scars/Collecting your jar of hearts/And tearing love apart" will not go down in history as one of the best insults in music. Then again, neither will "You're gonna catch a cold/From the ice inside your soul". Like, that isn't even worth a burn joke, that is just straight up pathetic. Honestly, I'm not really one for the insulting kind of break up songs either, I talked abut why in my "Addicted" review, but comparing this song to "Addicted" makes me shudder because it forces me to say the words "Simple Plan is better", I feel dirty, but it's true, Simple Plan at the very least was memorable for a better reason than having a truly weak insult.

She then goes on to sing the lines "But I have grown too strong/To ever fall back in your arms", and honestly, I don't buy it. She sounds like she wants to go back to him, and forget all the bad things that ever happened. We've all been there, but we've had friends to help us through the confused emotions, this honestly sounds like she was trying to work through these feelings on her own, which doesn't make one strong, it just makes you look like a loner.

Also, a minor nitpick, but one lyric that drives me nuts is this: "You don't get to get me back", it just doesn't sound or look right, and a better way to write it would replace the second "get" with "have" or "take" or any other synonym for "get". I understand what she is trying to do here, but it just doesn't work.

This is also another one of those songs where the majority of lyrical content is mostly just chorus. You know, I hate songs that are so proud of their chorus that they don't bother having more than four lines in their verses. I'm not expecting lyrics from System of a Down, but I am at least expecting you to put more effort into your lyrics. Metal and rock can get away with this because they often give a lot of time to instrumentals, but even then metal tries harder with it's lyrics.

This may be the worst break-up song I have ever heard. The piano is stock, Christina's performance is poor and the lyrics are weak. Nothing about this song works, and it just sounds like a ploy that screams "feel sorry for me!".

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and one more thing to get off of my chest before I can go back to interesting things.

No comments:

Post a Comment