Peak
17
Weeks
31
Score
3,784
Chart Year
2011
The music video for the song was directed by Jay Martin.[21] A "Behind the scenes..." look was given into the recording of the music video on August 25, 2010.[22] In the video, Perri states "I really hope that the video connects me to the song and entertains all of the fans of So You Think You Can Dance because it’s because of them that this even happened. I really hope that they love it. I hope that they love the dance…and that they just feel like we did this song justice with this video."[22] So You Think You Can Dance contestants Allison Holker and Kathryn McCormick appear as dancers in the music video, performing choreography by Stacey Tookey.[22] The music video premiered on September 13, 2010, on Perri's YouTube channel.[23] The video begins with Perri singing on a stoop while black petals fall from the sky. As Perri begins walking, a smoke reflection is shown over her chest, showing that her "jar" is empty - her heart is missing. As the song continues, Perri walks through different scenarios of hearts being collected, all by the same man, whose "jar" is being filled. This includes an intimate moment in a car and another in a phone booth, both of which leave the women whose hearts are stolen (through their mouths) with empty jars. They fall unconscious away from the collector, a young man with dark hair. Towards the end of the video, Perri is watching as the collector, the love-interest, collects more hearts while dancing with different women. The video ends with Perri stealing a heart from him, leaving his "jar" empty. He falls to the ground, and she appears to recuperate with her heart newly intact. The music video was added to a list of "VH1’s Top 40 Music Videos Of 2010," "Jar of Hearts" coming in at number seventeen.[24] During the premiere of Perri's "Daydream," VH1 compared it to the music video of "Jar of Hearts" stating that it took a more cinematic route that "relied heavily on slow motion to connote emotion
In this song, Christina Perri looks to distance herself from a guy who is worse than a heartbreaker - he's a heart collector, keeping them in a (metaphorical) jar and tearing love apart. She wrote the lyric about a serial heart collector she once dated. On her blog, she told the story behind the tune: "I wrote the song after I went home to Philadelphia for the holiday last December [2009]. I sat in my childhood bedroom and hid from the boy (with the jar of hearts) who wanted to see me. My heart wanted to see him, my head knew better." "Jar Of Hearts" was Christina Perri's first single, released in 2010 about 10 months before it appeared on her debut album, Lovestrong. Perri moved to Los Angeles from Philadelphia with one suitcase and a guitar. She was hoping to follow in the footsteps of her older, musician brother Nick Perri, the former lead guitarist of Shinedown. Her breakthrough came when "Jar Of Hearts" featured on the June 30, 2010 episode of the nationwide televised dance competition So You Think You Can Dance before it was even released. Billy Bell and Kathryn McCormick danced to the song on the show in a routine choreographed by Stacey Tookey. The routine and the song got a great reaction from viewers, so the track was rushed onto iTunes, where it immediately landed at #20 on the overall chart. It was gradually added to radio playlists, and on September 13, 2010, the video landed on YouTube. The song made a slow climb up the charts, reaching #17 in the US on March 19, 2011. Perri learned about the song's placement on So You Think You Can Dance, following a particularly grueling shift at a Café in Beverly Hills, one that had her daydreaming about dramatic ways to cease employment. "I was being yelled at all day," she said. "I got into my car and I wasn't 100 feet from the café when I got the call. I screamed. Then I cried. Then I called my mom." The song's music video was directed by Jay Martin (Death Cab for Cutie, Cold War Kids, Wolfmother) and was shot on a soundstage designed as a New York City street. The clip features So You Think You Can Dance All-Stars Kathryn McCormick and Allison Holker (who both danced to Christina's song on the show) as well as Keltie Colleen, Peter Chu, Chelsea Thedinga, Chantel Aguirre and Eboni Adams. SYTYCD's Stacey Tookey choreographed the dancers. Perri's co-manager Tom Gates told Billboard magazine that it was Perri who came up with the idea for the video. "When we were flying back from all those meetings, she was all keyed up and I just wanted to sleep," he recalled. "I told her she should spend the flight writing a treatment for the video if she needed something to do, and when I woke up at LAX, she had done it." Perri admitted to PopEater that it's bittersweet that so many people can relate to a song that has such a painful meaning. She explained: "I go to all these places, and I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of people who like the song and to play it for them. They come up to me, and it's not like they come up and they're like, 'This song about the sunshine and being on the beach all day. I love that song and I totally relate!' They're literally like, crying, and some of them are like, 'I've just gone through a divorce, and this song made me'... but that's normally the end of that sentence or story. [Then] it's always like, 'I have hope now,' or 'I've gained strength from this.' Even though it's really a kind of bizarre, sad, heart-wrenching topic, I feel like the main theme in the song, if you listen, is about getting stronger and not going back to that person that keeps breaking your heart. It's a weird one, but I like the fact that people end up feeling stronger after they hear it." As a result of this song, Perri's fans would often send her jars with hearts of some kind - not real ones (we hope). Perri wrote this song with Barrett Yeretsian and Drew Lawrence. Yeretsian produced it. Christina Perri followed "Jar Of Hearts" with a few more hits, including "A Thousand Years" from the Twilight movie Breaking Dawn. She did a lot of touring before shifting her focus to family. In 2017, she got married, and in 2018 had her first child, a daughter named Carmella.
I know I can't take one more step towards you 'Cause all that's waiting is regret Don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore You lost the love I loved the most I learned to live, half alive And now you want me one more time And who do you think you are? Runnin' 'round leaving scars Collecting your jar of hearts And tearing love apart You're gonna catch a cold From the ice inside your soul So don't come back for me Who do you think you are? I hear you're asking all around If I am anywhere to be found But I have grown too strong To ever fall back in your arms And I learned to live, half alive And now you want me one more time And who do you think you are? Runnin' 'round leaving scars Collecting your jar of hearts And tearing love apart You're gonna catch a cold From the ice inside your soul So don't come back for me Who do you think you are? Dear, it took so long just to feel alright Remember how to put back the light in my eyes I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed 'Cause you broke all your promises And now you're back You don't get to get me back And who do you think you are? Runnin' 'round leaving scars Collecting your jar of hearts And tearing love apart You're gonna catch a cold From the ice inside your soul So don't come back for me Don't come back at all And who do you think you are? Runnin' 'round leaving scars Collecting your jar of hearts Tearing love apart You're gonna catch a cold From the ice inside your soul Don't come back for me Don't come back at all Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are?
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jul 17, 2010 | 63 | 63 |
| 2 | Jul 24, 2010 | 58 | 68 |
| 3 | Jul 31, 2010 | 34 | 92 |
| 4 | Aug 7, 2010 | 63 | 63 |
| 18 | Nov 13, 2010 | 96 | 30 |
| 19 | Nov 20, 2010 | 76 | 50 |
| 20 | Nov 27, 2010 | 75 | 51 |
| 21 | Dec 4, 2010 | 62 | 64 |
| 22 | Dec 11, 2010 | 65 | 61 |
| 23 | Dec 18, 2010 | 65 | 61 |
| 24 | Dec 25, 2010 | 49 | 77 |
| 25 | Jan 1, 2011 | 46 | 80 |
| 26 | Jan 8, 2011 | 43 | 83 |
| 27 | Jan 15, 2011 | 41 | 85 |
| 28 | Jan 22, 2011 | 30 | 96 |
| 29 | Jan 29, 2011 | 27 | 99 |
| 30 | Feb 5, 2011 | 26 | 100 |
| 31 | Feb 12, 2011 | 22 | 104 |
| 32 | Feb 19, 2011 | 25 | 101 |
| 33 | Feb 26, 2011 | 27 | 99 |