Christina Perri Explains Her Twi-Hard Journey to Taylor Lautner

Christina Perri was a Twilight superfan long before she wrote the ending credits song for Breaking Dawn, she revealed on The Squeeze with Tay and Taylor Lautner. 

“I even had the four book covers framed on my wall,” Perri says. “When I had an apartment in Hollywood, I had nothing else. I literally had a keyboard and what my friends called a “dog bed” because I couldn’t even afford a real bed. But I thought that the book covers were so important that I should go to CVS and buy four frames and put them on my wall.”

In fact, Perri intentionally signed with Atlantic Records because she saw a Twilight poster on their office wall. “If I signed with Atlantic,” she remembers thinking, “maybe I’ll be able to be a part of this—my favorite books, my favorite franchise.”

But it took what seemed like a thousand steps to get “A Thousand Years” into that 7-minute ending credits sequence. Perri broke down the journey, and… wow. You gotta admire the perseverance.

Christina Perri Explains Her Twi-Hard Journey to Taylor Lautner

“Every time I would like go to New York and I’d have a meeting with the label, I’d be like, ‘So, anything going on with Twilight? What’s up with that?’” she recalls. She knew she had a chance because of her relationship with Atlantic, “But I also didn’t know what that meant. I’d never written a song for a movie. I thought, “Maybe a million people submit songs for movies.”

Eventually, perseverance paid off.

“My manager called me one day and was like, ‘Hey, do you wanna go screen Breaking Dawn Part 1 and write a song for the wedding?’ And I just flat out fell on the ground, and made some sound he said he’d never heard before,” Perri tells Taylor and Tay. At the early screening, the film “was still so unfinished that there were men holding little wolf heads” in front of a green screen.

Despite the rough state of the movie, Perri says, she couldn’t help but go “full fan-girl energy.” “A lot of people were on their phones and looked very businessy. And I was in the front row, literally crying,” she says. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. This is the best day of my whole life.”

Perri was specifically commissioned to write a song for Edward and Bella’s wedding (sorry, Team Jacob hive!), so when she found out that another songwriter, David Hodge, had gotten the gig, she assumed it was over. (Fun fact: The song that plays during the wedding scene, “Turning Page” by Sleeping At Last, was originally titled “A Hundred Years” but changed in deference to Perri’s song.)

“Everyone remembers it wrong. It’s like the Mandela effect,” says Perri. “Everyone thinks ‘A Thousand Years’ was in the wedding.” (Maybe that’s because it became a classic “first dance” song for thousands of Twilight-loving couples?)

Instead, her manager delivered mixed news.

“‘The bad news is you didn’t get the wedding,’” she remembers him telling her. “‘The good news is you, we’ve got you the credits [of Breaking Dawn: Part 1]. So it potentially could be a single.’”

“A Thousand Years” was placed second in the credits, after Bruno Mars’ “It Will Rain,” the film’s lead single. At the premiere, Perri remembers sitting in the audience to watch her song play over the credits after everyone else had gotten up. “I was still so grateful. I was not bummed about it. And I was just so stoked to be included.”

To everyone’s surprise, “A Thousand Years” became a huge hit. “It was 2011, so there’s no Spotify. They were just going based off of single sales.” The label began pushing the song for radio play. Twi-hards declared it their “Swan Song” as they prepared for the franchise to come to an end. Soon, Perri was joining the cast at press events. She flew in a private plane with the cast members and would play the song at Q&A events. 

“I remember being on this private plane [and thinking] “Don’t call Ashley [Greene] Alice. Do not call Jackson [Rathbone] Jasper.” Perri had become, as Taylor Lautner says, “an honorary cast member.”

The song became such a phenomenon that director Bill Condon decided it should be part of the final film’s sendoff as well. 

Perri recalls Condon asking her, “I wanna do a seven-minute version of the song. Can you re-record it and do a full orchestra? And then we’re gonna surprise the fans with a seven-minute curtain call and have everybody at the end of the movie.”

Perri is still amazed by the journey.

“I went from being the second credit song to the last seven minutes of the final film. And then it was the number one wedding song.”

Even Tay Lautner said that she wished she and Taylor could have played “A Thousand Years” at their wedding, but that they ultimately decided it would be “a little weird.”

Thirteen years after Breaking Dawn: Part 2, the song continues to grow and evolve. Perri re-recorded a lullaby version for her daughters, Carmella and Pixie, and now she’s written a children’s book based on the song. It just goes to show you being a fangirl can really pay off.

For more stories from Perri, listen to her episode of The Real Stuff with Lucie Fink. And for fellow Twi-hards, listen to The Squeeze with Tay and Taylor Lautner.