Christina Perri wasn’t sure she’d ever release another album. After the success of her debut (lovestrong.)and nine back-to-back tours, she was burnt out.

“I didn’t want to do anything that wasn’t genuine, and I was afraid of phoning it in or forcing anything,” Perri told Radio.com in a recent interview. “I remember laying on the floor of my house just crying. Good crying and sad crying at the same time. I was just trying to believe the things that had happened.”

In doing that she sat down at the piano, because the only way she knows how to feel better is to write.

“Even if absolutely nobody listens or anybody hears these songs, they heal me in the moment,” she said. “I sat at the piano and wrote this song called ‘Trust.’ As soon as I did I had a eureka moment, and I immediately knew what I wanted to say.”

Perri had been in and out of many different relationships where she would alternate trusting her head and her heart, and she couldn’t figure out which was the right way to go.

“I was trying to find the right thing and make the right choices, and because none of the relationships worked out I felt as though I just didn’t trust me. So I wrote a song about it. In that moment when I wrote the song, I named the album Head or Heart. I knew that ‘Trust’ would be the first song on the album and set up the album, and I knew that the theme of the album would be split into two — into head songs and into heart songs.”

One of those “heart” songs, “Be My Forever,” is the happiest song she’s ever written. The song features Perri’s friend, singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, something she’s been hinting at but hasn’t revealed until now. One of her favorite songs on Head or Heart, Perri wrote the song with Jamie Scott while in London this past January.

“I was the most in love I may have ever been in my whole life, which is awesome because I knew I had a happy song in me,” she said. “As much as I love the heart-wrenching stuff, I didn’t want to force a happy song, and I think you can always tell when a song is fake. I remember going in the studio with this guy and him looking at me and I was glowing. And I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m in love. This is going to be awful. We’re never going to write a song.’”

Perri also revealed that she knew the moment she wrote “Be My Forever” that it would become a duet.

“I was like, ‘This has to be a duet and it has to be with Ed Sheeran. Please! He’s my number one choice and it’s all I want. It’s perfect for me and him.’ He doesn’t really sing a lot of happy songs either, so we laugh about that. It’s both of us doing the happiest song. He’s my friend, and it just felt perfect.”

Perri and Sheeran recorded the song in Los Angeles while Sheeran was in town on tour with Taylor Swift.

“He came into the studio, and we were playing it and he was like, ‘Oh my God I love this song. I want to do it.’ We were like, ‘Okay!’ We didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t tell our labels. It was so organic and perfect,” she said. “We went into the studio and we laughed and had the best time ever. You can hear it. We’re screaming and laughing at the end. His cousin was there and says something silly at the end of the song. I feel like we captured a moment.”

Christina Perri’s Head or Heart will be released March 11.

Källa