Does she have any songs that aren’t called after body parts?

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[4.10]
Andy Hutchins: I like Christina Perri’s burgeoning career as the triangulation of Amy Lee, Alanis, and Vanessa Carlton, and while I love her in the icy kiss-off mode from “Jar of Hearts” more than this (and, uh, “Rolling in the Deep”), “Arms” is a sweet update of “Head Over Feet.” And the instrumental really knows how to gird her slight, angled voice, with impatient drums and swelling strings. Pity this has virtually no chance of breaking on the electroshocked radio.
[7]
Hazel Robinson: Having a pretty girl steal Caitlin Moran’s hair to sing it doesn’t disguise what’s fundamentally a Plain White T’s album track with some inconceivably cheap and seemingly random drum machine punctuation. Poor.
[3]
Al Shipley: “Jar of Hearts” was the most offensive jar of wank to launch an unknown into the top 40 in recent memory. So it’s pretty alarming, disturbing even, that this sunk-haired descendant of Alanis has released a follow-up that I find even kind of decent.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Christina Perri, after taking the studio-production upgrade bequeathed to her for nothing, arrays her voice into something conspicuously competent rather than weak-ergo-REAL and arrays her pianos and acoustic guitar and drum machine — would you look at that! — into something graceful rather than kludgy. These are good steps! The next step is to have even one interesting sonic or lyrical idea.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: This has a lovely arrangement, with the folky guitar to open giving way to some rolling drums once the song kicks into gear. Perri hugs the song to death though, conveying nothing in particular, though with lyrics this bland, who could tell?
[5]
Michaela Drapes: I’m afraid I am not at all ashamed for being completely suckered in by the faux circa 2004 big indie rock production. It’s like, I hear even the slightest hint of Joshua Tree-influenced bombast, and I’m so toast — even when it’s as thin and tinny as what’s demonstrated here. Helpfully, the creaking infrastructure is propped up by Perri’s voice, stronger and more interesting than most of the sensitive girl balladeers of late, with perfect cracks of vulnerability in all the right places.
[7]
Matthew Harris: She loses three points, easy, for the unironic and bombastic use of timpani. Two points for the strings slinking around the edges, seemingly inserted to give Starbucks an aural excuse to add it to their playlists. And despite singing from the position of not currently being in the arms that feel like home, Perri sounds like she’s mostly okay with being armless (homeless?). Thus, one final point off for each un-missed arm.
[3]
Sally O’Rourke: Perri again sings in curlicues to distract from her inherent colorlessness, but the tortured metaphors of “Jar of Hearts” have been swapped for ignorable platitudes. That’s an improvement, right?
[3]
Anthony Easton: Wow. Twee disaster of profound banality, makes Beyonce seem profound and deep. Will be playing at weddings into the next decade.
[0]
Jer Fairall: My first instinct is to let loose with this the public thrashing that I never got to deliver to her miserable and still-unavoidable-a-year-later hit “Jar of Hearts,” but sadly(?) this is just some generic, earnest, over-sung piano girl pop of the sort that we were once inundated with in the backwash of Lilith Fair and Dawson’s Creek. Doesn’t mean this doesn’t suck; it’s just a helluva lot easier to ignore.
[3]
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