Blue (2022) – Christina Perri

The music of Christina Perri has been my ‘Mendihuaca beach‘. This beach is located between Tayrona and Palomino on the Carribean Coast in Colombia. Mendihuaca felt like home to my family, and I can say the music of Perri feels homely to me as well. As I started uncovering Perri’s music, I felt like a 12-year-old all over again; ‘I know something which y‘all don’t yet‘.

Perri thundered onto the music scene after her first album in 2011 ‘Lovestrong‘, but her recent stuff from her 2022 album A Lighter Shade of Blue is as good as anything I have heard. It’s just such a humble record and chock-full of some of the best ballads I have had the privilege to hear. It’s unfortunate so few listen to it. Anyone that can write ‘Cause the blue of my mother has always been my color‘ is in the big leagues.
I remain perplexed how people don’t identify with it. Mind you, people not identifying with my tastes is nothing new to me.

Christina Perri said in this video:
As soon as we wrote Blue..oh I said the album will be called ‘A Lighter Shade of Blue‘….It’s so weirdly foreshadowing the experiences of my life. I feel like Blue is the beginning…. It is exactly what I wanted to say.

[Verse 1]
I learned to swim all by myself
Too young to never ask for help
From then ’til forever
It’s the cold that keeps me warm at night

[Chorus]
‘Cause the blue of my mother has always been my color
The love that I offer is deep and out of tune
But you hold me ’cause you know me
All that I can do is turn a lighter shade of blue

The result is a body of work that encapsulates Perri’s artistry in a way that reflects her journey in both life and motherhood while also standing alone as a compelling reflection on grief. “It’s the cold that keeps me warm at night,” she sings. “All that I can do is turn a lighter shade of blue.” For Perri, she knows everything she needs is all around her.

Not to measure or compare grief in any way, but life’s just kinda hard for everybody is what I’m learning in my 30s. I’ll never stop having inspiration to write really emotional things regardless of how put together I look or how many things I tick off my list.

The track Blue, which is where the title of the album comes from, is the acceptance of the darker parts of yourself and that those darker pieces might actually be a conduit to the light. Reminiscent of Cohen’s famous line in Anthem ‘There is a crack a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.‘
Blue has the maturity and subtlety that Perri’s megahit Thousand Years doesn’t have.

When I heard Blue for the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder how she transfigured the song into a 70’s sound-space. It’s kind of Elton John-ish and transports me to his heyday. There are other songs by her where she even manages to transfigure the feel of a song into an entirely different genre of music. Take for example, her remarkable ‘The Lonely‘ – I come away from that song as if I had just heard a classical piece.
I haven’t heard a bad song from her yet. Even today her song Bluebird arrived, and I heard it. It’s the same as always..OK, another one for the collection.

Reference:
1. Christina Perri- Wikipedia

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“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand