The first two topped the Billboard 200 chart, and between the three of them, they’ve sold 4.5 million copies in the Unites States alone. If you’re an artist interested in reaching a large audience — one who likes their vampires sparkly and their music moody — you’ll want a spot on a Twilight Saga soundtrack.

Singer-songwriter Christina Perri features on the latest, the original motion picture soundtrack for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (the disc is due Nov. 8). A self-identified “Twihard” who waited in line eight hours for New Moon tickets and tattooed “Bitten” on her wrist long before she scored a hit with 2010 single “Jar of Hearts,” Perri’s new Breaking Dawn-inspired love ballad — the waltzing, orchestra-backed “A Thousand Years” — is the second single off the latest Twilight compilation.

So what, then, is the secret of landing a spot on a Twilight Saga soundtrack?

“Ohmigosh. Magic? I dunno,” says an earnest Perri over the phone. “I just dreamt it.”

Dreaming, after all, gets results for the L.A. musician. Every new year, a bit before the ball drops, Perri says she makes a “little list of dreams.” You could call them resolutions. “It’s a list of things I would love to happen and affirm to the universe,” the 25-year-old explains. “It’s very hippie of me.”

In 2010, her list featured the following: quit smoking, meet Jason Mraz, land a record deal. According to Perri, she checked off every entry — though that last item was accomplished in unusually spectacular fashion. In June 2010 a then-unknown Perri got one of her songs into the hands of a So You Think You Can Dance choreographer. That song, “Jar of Hearts,” was featured in a routine on the show. The piano ballad charted on Billboard soon after. One month later, she was performing live on the program and being flown to New York to sign a deal with Atlantic Records. Calling her an overnight sensation would be apt.

The top item on her 2011 list? Land a song on the Breaking Dawn soundtrack — a goal that was hardly a secret thanks to her saying as much, repeatedly, to the press and her team (she notes that Atlantic Records holds a partnership with Chop Shop, the company helmed by Twilight‘s music supervisor, Alexandra Patsavas). Still, saying you want a song in Breaking Dawn and actually landing the opportunity are two totally different things, but this summer, Perri was given the chance to affirm the power of good old fashioned goal setting.

She was asked to write a brand new song for the film, and to prepare, she and co-writer David Hodges — whom she’d worked with previously on her May 2011 debut, Lovestrong — were invited to a small preview screening of Breaking Dawn, Part 1.

Perri admits she’s become emotional after watching every Twilight movie so far. “Ye-e-eah, I’ve cried after all of them,” she says. Breaking Dawn, Part 1 was no exception.

“Ohmigod, I was such a dork,” remembers Perri. “It was so funny, everybody was all like Hollywood, and on their Blackberries, and very professional, and I sat right up front and cried my eyes out the whole time. … I cried because the movie is so good and I cried because I felt so lucky to be there.”

As for the Hollywood types pecking out BBMs, and any other assorted members of Team Twilight, Perri explains that everyone left her in her own creative world when it came to songwriting. “They just said ‘Here’s the movie, and whatever inspires you please submit.’ It was so loose,” she explains. And Perri didn’t slack on filling that request.

“It’s funny, I feel as though I could’ve wrote ‘A Thousand Years’ without having seen the movie because I am such a big fan,” says Perri — but actually getting the chance to preview it left her overwhelmed with fangirlish inspiration. “The vibe, the characters, the wedding, the honeymoon, the whole — the movie is just so phenomenally wonderful that I left there on such a high that we ran straight to my house and just knocked it out really fast.”

Fast like one day.

“I just decided to take my favourite part of the movie and just write about it,” Perri says — and by Taylor Lautner’s abdominals, thank goodness she’s not obsessed with Breaking Dawn’s birthing scene.

“Take away all the fluff and Robert Pattinson and vampires — you don’t need any of that when you read this book. Or the whole series. To feel the real, pure love that’s there,” Perri says of what she loves about the Twilight Saga.

“I wrote it [‘A Thousand Years’] solely [thinking] about the purest form of love between Edward and Bella, or between any man and woman about to get married, and feeling you found your soul mate,” she says. “Everyone’s saying it’s Edward and Bella’s love song and it has a lot to do with the wedding, but I didn’t make it about the wedding. I made it about the love — the feelings, the emotions, the fear. So I wanted to make it able to be at any part of the movie. I didn’t specifically write it for one thing, but when I sat down at the piano — ohmigod, that’s what came out. It was just the purest form of the love story that got me.”

Perri still doesn’t know where “A Thousand Years” will appear in the film. “They tell me nothing. They’re secret service, the Summit studio.” But with its placement, at least, guaranteed, she could use a late addition to her 2011 wish list: “Make a good impression on the cast of Breaking Dawn.” Leading up to the film’s release, she’ll travel to a few cities in the U.S. with members of the cast to do promo.

“I haven’t met any of them, and I’m going to be on a jet with them. I can’t imagine it yet, I’m actually terrified,” she says. “Ohmigod. I’m still not sure how I’m not going to pee my pants.”

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is due in stores Nov. 8.