We Are One Tonight

The song opens with a simple and pleasant guitar riff, accompanied by a driving beat. Then they do something pretty cool, the ending of the chorus, “tonight, tonight”, is sung during the intro. It’s nothing profound, but it’s a little different, and blends nicely with the feel of the intro riff. There’s a reason that verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus is so widely used; it works. But where would we be in life if we had that attitude about everything? Where would we be if people who engineered cell phones a few decades back said, “you know what, this brick sized phone does it’s job, let’s focus on something else.” Sure we all might pay more attention in class, but would anyone want to revert to a time when a gun was easier to conceal than a phone? Back on point, thank you Switchfoot for mixing it up, even if it means taking baby strides towards being different.

The first verse takes a turn musically from happy and joyful to cool and choppy. The verses really are cool musically, listen to the instruments. The verses are pretty simple, “I’ll rise, I’ll fall”. That about sums it up. “We built these cities to stand so tall. We’ve lost our walls.” He’s talking about these ”marvelous” things man has made. I believe these verses are about the pleasures we obtain from earthly things and what it causes our world to be like. It describes a world where we try all we want, but don’t actually accomplish anything. The music, like I mentioned earlier, is cool, but a little chaotic. It’s enjoyable, but choppy in a way. This wonderfully underlines the idea that the verses represent joys found by worldly means.

The pre-chorus’ take a look at the verses and say to them, “I don’t want you”. “I don’t want to lost it, coming down … I don’t have a soul to trust in now, with the whole world upside-down”. The state of the world as described by the verses leaves people worrying about losing things and not trusting people. This focus on the world has people losing focus on what really matters.

“We are one tonight!”

The chorus welcomes back the joyful, more full sounding music from the intro. In the same way the choppiness of the verses mirrors the writer’s state of un-fulfillment, the full sound of the music in the chorus reflects a state of satisfaction. All that mess of a world doesn’t matter, because we’re one tonight. “The world is flawed, but these scars will heal, we are one tonight”.

A bit later in the song, comes Jon saying, “slow the evening down, slow down, slow down, please slow down”. This goes right along with the idea that the world is moving too fast and going crazy. This is followed by a buildup with “the stars are coming out”. That’s so beautiful. Slow the evening down, the stars are coming out! Stop doing life at the speed of light and start moving at the speed of life, otherwise you’ll miss it and all the beautiful things along the way.

In the end, what I get from this is do life with people and for people, essentially, not for yourself. Because the alternative is for money, sex, or whatever else corrupts the greatest among us. Along with this alternative comes an un-fulfillment that will never go away without a change.

Economy of Mercy

This one was written back when you didn’t have to try as hard to get an idea of the faith of Switchfoot. While the music is nice and melodic, the beauty to this one lies within the lyrics. It begins with possibly the most curious line(s) of the song, “There’s just two ways to lose yourself in this life, and neither way is safe”. I suspect that the idea behind this is you can either give your life away or have it taken. If you’re committed to making your life better by your lonesome, you may quickly fail and have this world chew you up and spit you out. If you give your life away, one can rely on hope of a higher power. The danger in this is your higher power may be someone like Jim Jones (the drink the kool-aid guy). But you can’t really sit back and not make a decision on anything, because that’s about the same as choosing to have your life taken from you. “Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything” ~Alexander Hamilton. This verse is tied off with the idea that you can hope for the future all you want, but “we are right now” (that’s from Needle and Haystack Life, which basically spends a song on this idea), so live in the here and now. What this means is not that you should live in hope of things to come, but rather in the present, where a difference can be made right now. When you combine this live in today idea with the idea of making a choice/giving your life away, you get a pretty powerful message wrapped up nicely in four lines of an inspirational song.

The pre-chorus (“where will I find you?”) leads right into the chorus in a clever way. This may have been unintentional on Jon’s part, but I think the first line of the chorus both answers the question from the pre-chorus and acts as the beginning of the train of that that is the chorus. In the economy of mercy/
I am a poor and begging man/In the currency of grace/Is where my song begins/In the colors of Your goodness/In the scars that mark Your skin/In the currency of grace/Is where my song begins. It pretty much explains itself… beautiful eh?

Second verse, queue the colorful analogy. This verse calls us, people, “carbon shells”, “dusty frames” that “house canvases of soul”, “bruised and broken masterpieces” who “did not paint ourselves”. It’s something that’s tough to describe, but something I feel very accurately reflects the state of the world. It’s like we were beautiful once, or like we have the potential to be beautiful with a little effort. But if we’re all dusty and bruised, who can help? After all, a broken arm can’t fix a broken house. What CAN fix our lack of color and goodness is the one whose goodness is overflowing with color and majesty. If only something in this song alluded to such a being. Well what do you know, check out the chorus, “In the colors of Your goodness”. I think it’s a pretty safe assumption to say that Jon’s talking about God based off of his background (and the pre-chorus). Either way, the analogy is that we’re grayscale and boring, whereas God has so much color that we can’t even imagine the extent of His awesomeness. We’re so broken and lost, whereas God is so wonderful that we can’t even understand. When you look at a plane in the sky, it doesn’t matter if it took off only 15 minutes ago or if it is at the highest altitude possible… it’s really high. Sure you can make an educated guess based off of how big the plane looks, but in the end, it’s really high. In the same way, God is so much higher than us that we can’t comprehend His goodness. I guess comparing dusty and old to beautifully colorful is Jon’ way of bringing this enormous difference of us/God to light.

The bridge basically states the idea I was talking about in the last paragraph. “I’m lost without you here”. “You knew my name when the world was made”. He transitions from cool analogies of color and an economy of mercy to the straightforward confession of being lost without God. In the end, aren’t we all? If you said “no”, I think you meant to say “very yes”.

Ps. I apologize for any grammatically incorrect use of any symbols like “ . , etc.

Faust, Midas, and Myself

If you’ve never heard this one before, you should listen to it, it’s fantastic, one of my favorites for sure. If you have heard it before or are just lazy, listen to the first three notes. They should tell you all you need to know about the general mood of the song. Eerie, dreamy, and almost sad, in the way that a rainy day is sad.

This song could be a novel. It has quite a story packed into a 4-ish minute song. It’s about direction, temptation, and internal warfare/struggle. A bit of background … Faust comes from a story of this guy, Faust, who basically sells his soul to the devil in return for power, magic, whatever. Midas is the king who turned anything he touched into gold. Myself is good ol’ Jon Foreman (the writer).

So the song opens in describing a dream where this guy follows him (the writer) home and is mad sketchy. He proceeds to offer (I’m just going to call the main character of this story Jon, whether it is about himself or not) Jon anything he could ever dream of wanting. The song then offers the statement, “You’ve one life left to lead”, introducing the idea of direction in life to this so tempting offer. Now it gets interesting. Jon describes waking up from this dream to a world where everything is gold… and it scares him. “I don’t think this is me. Is this just a dream or really happening?” Then it goes back into “You’ve one life left to lead”. Then it explodes, sort of in the way that some life lessons hit you like a ton of bricks, into “WHAT DIRECTION?” and “I’M SPLITTING UP, THIS IS MY PERSONAL DISAFFECTION”. Would you really want to have everything you touch become gold? Midas did, look where that got him; he ended up hating his “gift”. His food turned to inedible gold, and his daughter to a golden statue. It’s sort of like being mega rich but being alone… it’s not worth it. Jon realizes that if he were to embrace this offer of anything he could ever want, he’d be left alone, with only temporary pleasures to accompany him. The next verse continues describing a world of gold and how it’s affecting Jon, “I hated what I saw, my golden eyes were dead, a thought passed through my head, a heart that’s made of gold can’t really beat at all.”

Gold comes up a lot in this song, and it’s perfect. Gold is very pretty, and rare enough for it to be valuable… but what do we do with it? We look at it. To me, gold represents a sort of shallowness. Would you be happy with all the gold in the world? King Solomon had gold … sooo much gold. Did he stare at it all day long and marvel at his wealth? He used a lot of it to build a temple for God. It was a sacrifice of his wealth; the point being that honoring God is more worthy than any possible amount of gold.

“I wanted to wake up again, without a touch of gold” followed by a dreamy chorus of “what direction” lines. This leads into another explosion of sorts with “LIFE BEGINS AT THE INTERSECTION!” That is one of my favorite Switchfoot lines, I think I’ll come back to it later. This bridge for me is an awakening, in both senses. It’s followed with a wonderful verse, “I woke up as before, but the gold was gone. My wife was at the door with a night robe on. My heart beat once or twice, and life flooded my veins. Everything had changed, my lungs had found their voice, and what was once routine was now the perfect joy.” For starters, I like how the first time he said “I woke up from my dream”, he was actually dreaming, and this time he really woke up… at least that’s how I took it. We humans adjust to things. If the water’s cold, don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. We notice change. When you wear glasses all the time don’t notice they’re there until they think about it or take them off. When we have a good life, we get used to it and can find ourselves wanting more. In this song, Jon struggles with direction, and in the end, concludes that his life as he had it was the “perfect joy”. The end, awwww.

“Life begins at the intersection” is one of my favorite lines because it’s so simple and deep (at least, deep relative to how deep my mind is able to go). If you live a preset life, are you really living? If you only do things because they’re what society/peers suggest you should do … you’re more of a sheep than a human being. Life begins when you make a choice, when you decide, “that path is where I’m going to go”. If you just go through routine day after day, if you go through motions blindly, are you really living?

Yet

“All attempts have failed, all my heads are tails.” What do you do about that? If that’s you, what can you do? Well the easy and bad answer is give up. The hard answer is to start over completely. The last thing you could do is figure out how to use what you’ve got to make it right. Several places in this album (Hello Hurricane), Jon does a good job of describing, much more dramatically than I, this situation and how the solution he chose was the latter.

The second verse basically underlines this theme of everything being backwards, but it’s an interesting array of words. “These days pass me by, I dream with open eyes. Nightmares haunt my days, visions blur my nights.” This most likely is just an awesome way to describe how life can be backwards, but I’d like to suppose, in my wildest imagination, what it could mean. Dreaming with open eyes… dreams are things our minds throw together in a boggle sort of way. Dreaming can also be having dreams or ambitions, and chasing those dreams. Imagine if your life was spent living out your dream, and you could see your dreams take form right before your eyes. I just asked you to imagine something, please do it. Imagine yourself in a dreamy state thinking about your wildest ambitions. Picture them solidifying into reality as you watch. Sounds pretty fantastic. This could have some merit to it, but it’s not exactly in step with the message of the rest of the song. Oh well, one can dream.

The last line in both the first verse adds a bit of “the end is near” to the “everything’s messed up” ideas from the rest of the verses. It goes, “I’m heading for the final precipice”. What better to add to dilemma than urgency? Time is limited, and we all know that bad things happen when we always think there’ll be more time later. I’m not sure what the urgency is, but we can all relate. Chapters in life end, and sometimes these chapters find us in situations that will only exist in this chapter. When we let the pages of life pass us by until the chapter is over, we regret things. “Live life with no regrets” could probably be best explained as try to live life intentionally and do what you want to do as opposed to sitting back and watching life blow by in the breeze.

“I’ll sing until my heart caves in”. This isn’t settling in for retirement, this is fighting for what you believe in until death do you and the world part. “I’m holding on, I’m holding on to you.” I think of all the possible mentions of God in Switchfoot songs, this one’s hard to ignore (especially when you look at it in the full context). Ok you got me, this is from the next song on Hello Hurricane, but it fits wonderfully and I believe it helps to illustrate the meaning of this song. While Jon reveals how all of his life is messed up and crazy, he further shows that it doesn’t matter what’s happening to him, he’s going to hold on to the one thing he knows, and devote his everything to that. With Everything, he will sing.

Bridge time, “If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love.” At first, I thought it was silly to think that all love breaks your heart, but then I challenged my own definition of what it means to break a heart. I guess it means what you use it to mean. I don’t think it should be limited to being super sad after a girlfriend or boyfriend dumps you. Now it gets personal… The biggest moment of my life was when I devoted my life to God and to be more like Jesus (literally becoming a Christ-ian). I don’t care if that sounds Christian-machine generated, it’s true. I experienced a love I’d never truly known before. That sent my emotions on a wild stampede with the final destination of awesome. If our hearts represent our state of emotions, or perhaps their structure and how they operate, then to break one’s heart opens up the possibility of reforming it. So maybe what happened to me was that perfect love broke my heart and was able to realign it more properly. In no way is this a bad thing.

So now that it makes sense, how about the specifics of his claim, “If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love.” If you asked, I might tell you I love my guitar, but it would be in the same sense that I love ice cream. If it was stolen, I’d be upset and frustrated… after all, I spent my own money on that, and it wasn’t exactly cheap. But in the end, whatever. If my mom died… well I’d be a wreck. I wouldn’t properly function for quite a while. Love is powerful. Real love, when taken away, is a heartbreaker. But it’s worth it, it has to be. If nothing else, it’s a taste of what pure love is, what God’s love is. And He never withdraws His love if you ask for it. So to come full circle, love breaks your heart, whether in a good constructive way or a sad (and hopefully character building) way.

All in all, thanks to Switchfoot for being able to pack so much awesome in so few words. Sorry for sort of ignoring the musical part on this one. Basically, the music does a good job of reading you the lyrics in bold.

Stars

The song opens us to a chaotic and catchy guitar riff. Judging by the words, this represents the chaotic world we live in, the world of “entropy and pain”. The writer goes right into considering himself to blame. The world is messed up, and the writer is open to the idea that he may not be part of the problem… but it’s all guesswork, he doesn’t know. The verses, particularly the first, are filled with maybe’s and wonderings, uncertainties. When the chorus enters, everything seems more certain. I believe Jon’s saying that when he thinks about more than just himself, he actually feels more like himself. This is pretty cool, it’s like stop being selfish and you’ll actually be rewarded. I have definitely found this principle to hold true. I think this sort of parallels the idea that if you give everything to God, you’ll only be rewarded more.

Well that was easy… that’s what Stars is all about. Sure, and the point of college is to learn, but there’s more to it than just that. This is where writing about the meaning of lyrics becomes writing about interpretations of lyrics. Everything else I’ve left to say is based on thoughts provoked by the song.

Ever look into a night sky filled with beautiful stars? Isn’t it frustrating when you look up into the night and don’t see any more than like 3 stars? Stupid pollution … light and otherwise. Why are stars beautiful? If I took black construction paper, cut a few holes in it, and shined some white LEDs through it would that be beautiful? Not at all. I think they’re beautiful because of what they are and what they represent. They are huge, innumerable, and incredibly far away. If we struggle to imagine the size of planet Earth, how much more a star that is thousands of Earth’s away (and that’s just the closest star, any other one would be at least billions of Earth’s away). I think they’re so captivating because they’re so unimaginable and yet we can see so many in one view.

If you look at a building, say the student union at RPI, you’re looking at the comprehendible works of man. You’re looking at something that represents all sorts of student activities/clubs, food, jobs, etc. The union isn’t beautiful. What the sight represents can have a lot to do with how cool it is to look at. Stars represent something bigger than ourselves, something so vast we can’t even begin to wrap our minds around it all. Sooo much money and effort is spent into making things look cool. Think about a rock concert or the movie Avatar. All this stuff is cool and all, but does it really compare? I was dazzled by the crazy, colorful environment of some fake planet in the movie Avatar, but if I saw it over and over it just wouldn’t be as cool. It’s fake. Ever look at a mural of stars and thing, “eh, whatever”? It’s like temporary pleasures of this world, they’re tempting and enjoyable, but they just don’t compare in the long run to what God has to offer.

Like stars, there exists some one not fully comprehendible and some one infinitely beautiful…

“When I look at the stars I see someone else.”

This Is Your Life

            This is one of those songs. I like just about everything Switchfoot has done, but if you’ve never heard this one, listen to it. If for nothing I’m about to talk about, for the creativity throughout the entire song. All the wonderful noises are so darn cool and work together well to give the mindset(s) I’m about to ramble on about.

            The way I look at this song is that it’s the mindset(s) of a person. The words are just the thoughts going through his head; maybe something someone else said to them, or just a thought. The first mindset is a very abstract, pensive mindset. The song opens with this. All those cool, ambient, spacey noises going on scream surreal. Looking at the words alone is a tough thing to do. It’s a very simple, powerful message. Are you who you want to be? If you thought yes, you’re living a fantastic, inspiring life, or you have a bad idea of what your life should be (or you’re lying). It’s really tough realizing you aren’t who you want to be because if you aren’t, it’s on your shoulders. This feeling that the instruments and crazy sounds bring out in this mindset look to the past. Think about the verses. They are thoughts of what has been, of what took place. They are thoughts that take form in a person who is dwelling in the past. History can teach us a lot, but how could we ever move on if we can’t let go of something that went wrong in the past. “Don’t close your eyes. This is your life, and today is all you’ve got now.” This is where the person starts getting it. The music still suggests a thoughtful place, but the words lead into the transition into the next mindset.

            This next canvas is painted with simplicity and power. The chorus is very simple musically and lyrically, yet it’s just too cool. I believe this is sort of the awakening moment, the realization, the revelation, the taking of an idea and realizing what that actually means. I can know all I want that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, but I just don’t think I could bring myself to fully believe that if I ran at a lake I’d go right over it. This is an extreme example, but if ever in my life I can fully convince myself that I can run on water, there will have been a transition moment from knowing to knowing and believing. In the chorus, this hypothetical person seems to have hit that moment. He’s not just thinking anymore, he’s thinking the right thing and living it.

            From learning the rockin bass part to this song, I discovered that the bass part to the 1^st chorus is different from the rest of them. My theory is that the person sort of loses sight again (hence the second verse) and comes back stronger in the second chorus. The only difference (that I notice) between chorus 1 and 2 is the bass line. It makes the second chorus like 8 times awesomer. I think this guy got 8 times awesomer at living out the idea that we should be living for who we want to be and not settling for less… ever.

            Then there’s the bridge. This could just be a cool bit of music tossed into an awesome song. For the sake of trusting in Switchfoot’s awesomeness, I’m gunna make it work and hope it’s how they intended it. This is in the first mindset, but I get a different vibe from the whole thing. It seems more like reflection that dwelling on the past. My thought is that it’s a final stepping-stone to making this difficult and important idea posed by this song into a permanent reality. Notice the fantastic build up to the exciting final chorus. This one is a little different vocally, and to me it’s along the same idea as when the bass line upgraded. The vocals are just a bit cooler. Then the song fades out with that cool, catchy bass riff that the song began with. This song for me embodies the musical transition Switchfoot had from their previous album (Learning to Breathe) to this one (Beautiful Letdown). It’s when they started exploring more than just guitar, words, bass, and drums. They did add a 4^th member for this album who plays like everything, but whatever the case, this song for me was the beginning of something I have come to love.

Let That Be Enough

This time I’m gunna do an oldie. Let That Be Enough is from their second album, New Way to Be Human, back when they were less rock-y and more inspirational. This song works through a thought that many people have probably had before. Feeling alone and defeated, unsure of the direction of your life. The soothing feel of the guitar combined with the last line of the first verse (“I’m a plane in the sunset, with nowhere to land”) provide the imagery that sticks with me throughout the song. It’s a sad, beautiful view of the plane in the sunset, unsure of what to do or where to go.

“And all I see, it could never make me happy, and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing.” This pre-chorus sets up the perfect transition into the chorus. It poses the problem that a lot of people face. To quote C. S. Lewis, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Everything in this world is temporary. The best things we can ever make last for a super long time, but they still die/fade/rust/break. After all we as a race have been through, we still make things that slowly come to ruin, like entropy. Notice how life recycles.  Things die, but then get eaten by other things, or simply decompose. Plants and trees take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, while we do the opposite. Even poop makes fertilizer. The things we make, however, enjoy finding their way to a big pile with lots of other overused/unwanted things. Life doesn’t perfectly recycle, as entropy tells us, but I believe that’s our fault. Just as we struggle making things that last forever, we struggle finding true happiness in the things of this world. Where do we turn?

I think the answer to that question should be pretty clear, which is where the chorus takes us. Jon seems to be asking to feel the presence of God. More than that though, he says “let that be enough.” Many of us have wished God to speak to us at our command, which seems foolish when you step back and think about it. But God gives us what we need, “our God is a God who provides.” No matter how much God does for me, I often find myself wanting more. It manifests itself in a thought like, “it’s great that you did this for me, but how about that over there as well?” After all that’s been done for us, shouldn’t that be enough? Considering Jesus and all he did, shouldn’t it be more than enough?

The second verse drives home the loneliness theme that was sort of danced around in the first verse. The second pre-chorus is pretty sweet, “I feel stuck watching history repeating. Who am I? Just a kid who knows he’s needy.” Here’s a feeling of uselessness. This isn’t a wonderful thing, but for starters it’s relatable, and honest. Maybe this is the opposite extreme and not the right way of looking at it, but I feel this is a little more realistic than feeling like you can take on the world. Bear with me. Judging by the verse themes and contrasting with the longing for rightness with God in the chorus, I believe this second pre-chorus is pointing out that without God, what can we do? The occasional person can do huge things (Bill Gates), but if we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us… can you even imagine? Without God, we’re likely to sit back and watch this world all the worst of history.

This song may not have the edgy, rock feel of their newer songs, but it’s all still here. The passion, the feeling, the honesty, and everything else I love these guys for, all here. Even towards the beginning of their musical career, they could still deliver.

24

            The song 24 is a moving, reflective song that was written when Jon Foreman turned 24. Now that I’m no longer a teenager as of today, it seemed fitting.  The song is about reflecting on life, all that’s been done, and left undone. In this look into the previous 24 years of his life, Jon sees that his life isn’t full of teddy bears and rainbows. He acknowledges that he isn’t where he wishes to be, and that he needs God to make him better.

            I feel like we’ve all had these moments, moments when you step back and look at your life, and realize that things didn’t turn out as you’d hoped. It’s an awakening that is good for getting us back on track, and bad for our ego. As hard as it may be to evaluate where we are (especially if we don’t like that place), if we don’t do it every so often, we will lose ourselves and never know it. Getting back on track can be harder than admitting we’re lost. And without the Spirit’s guidance, getting back on track is no walk in the park. It’s like driving; if you don’t know where you are, you can try all you want to get back on track, and you might succeed, but it will take trial and error. If you’re driving with a passenger who knows every road and where they all go, then you won’t have any problems finding where to go, assuming you are willing to listen to the passenger. I’m always impressed with the heart behind Switchfoot songs. Think about being Switchfoot, they’re huge rock stars with loads of money. They have their own label because they could build a recording studio in their hometown. They have got it made. Yet he still feels like he isn’t perfect, or even close. So many people who he’s never met love him, and he still acknowledges that he needs something more and without it he’s lost. It’s great that he isn’t just settling in to the rich life and still trying to draw closer to the true source of purity and goodness.

            I was indifferent about this song for the longest time. Sure the music gave a moving, introspective vibe, but it seemed like nothing more that someone writing about the fact that he’s 24 and whatever. It’s amazing how songs that you’ve known forever can suddenly surprise you (especially Switchfoot, in my experience). As the song unfolds, the lyrics progress through what is probably the writers train of thought. It goes from looking around, to looking back, to the awakening, to asking for redemption, to wanting to see more in life. The song choruses through a few of these themes multiple times but that’s the basic pattern of the song as I see it. I think the last part, wanting to see more in life, might be the most important part. Anyone can look at themselves and not like everything they see (in fact something’s wrong if you do like everything you see), but it takes courage and ambition to not just want fix yourself but to become so much more. Where would we be without people who stepped up and decided that they weren’t going to just be satisfied with their lives but that they were going to be someone? One person can change the world. You just have to be fully committed to your mission/purpose. I think Switchfoot is a good example of this. They were just a couple of kids from San Diego who liked surfing and music. They weren’t (and still aren’t) the best guitarists since Hendrix, but they knew who they were and what they believed. I believe their passion is why they have come as far as they have. The passion they have is something that comes from taking a look at yourself and figuring out how to become a better person. We could all use some more of these awakening moments, why not start today?

            By the way, if you’re reading this or any other song and haven’t heard the song before, listen to it. And don’t just listen to it but LISTEN to it. You’re reading a blog so you obviously have a couple minutes to spare.

American Dream

            Chasing the American dream used to be a shared ideal among most Americans (whether fresh off the boat or 10^th generation). I imagine it looked a little different for everybody, but typically it was seeking to make a life for yourself through the job opportunities America had to offer. Plenty of people made good lives for themselves and their families this way. Today, the American dream looks a bit different. For people immigrating overseas it might be the same old dream, depending on where they’re coming from. For those who have been in America for a while, the American dream seems to be less of making a sustainable life for your family and more of climbing the corporate ladder. Climbing the corporate ladder may get your family a better life, but it seems to be the method that people focus on rather than the goal of a good life. Nowadays, the American dream is probably a lot more diverse in people’s minds than what it used to be, but this is the societal vibe I’m getting on what we are “supposed” to be aspiring towards.

            In the song American Dream, Jon illustrates the corporate life as and image of greed and monotony. He describes it as something that can consume your life and become what you live and breathe. I don’t think the message he’s trying to send is that we shouldn’t work for big companies ever because they’re all evil. I think the point is that there’s more to life than living for the “company goal”. Your job is your job, not your life. Ecclesiastes says we should love what we do, which is great, but it doesn’t say anything about living what we do. “Is it true would you do what I want you to, if I show up with the right amount of bling? Like a puppet on a monetary string. Maybe we’ve been caught singing red, white, blue, and green, but that ain’t my American dream.” I feel the bridge here sums up well his views on the state of those who live for their vocation. Setting up a great life for your family is a wonderful, ambitious, and respectable thing to do. However, I would argue that if you’re living your life for the company and letting that steal your time from your family, and even yourself, you’re probably pulling your family apart.

            The song starts with a pretty neat intro that sets the hectic pace of the song. I think this is supposed to reflect the hectic nature of getting too caught up in your business life. Then as the first verse comes in, with the themes mentioned previously (greed and living for the company), the fast paced feel to the music continues, but sets into a simple and monotonous rhythm. The pre-chorus kicks in by mixing up the instrumental part a bit and getting towards his thoughts of this new-age American dream. “I want out of this machine, it doesn’t feel like freedom.” I love the reference of the corporate world as a machine, and I think the repetitive guitar part in the verse is supposed to reflect the machine part of the corporate life. The corporate life isn’t for everyone, and I think the idea of it drove Jon mad. I think he’s a very free and expressive person, who lives to spread love, song, and God’s awe-some nature.

            In the chorus he says, “I’m tired of fighting for just me.” I think this could refer to people getting so lost in their own “American dream” that they stop living for the original goal of a good life for the family and start living for themselves and their standing in their business life. This could easily be taken as him not wanting to devote so much time to bettering his life as opposed to the lives of others. If that’s the line’s intent, I’m fine with it. I think there may be a little more here though. I think he feels as though the corporate race took his focus off of God and placed it on worldly aspirations. He, like many others, and myself, wish to devote all sorts of energy to God and to doing his work. We also get frustrated when such less important things manage to steal our focus from the main purpose of our existence. The corporate life isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t inherently a bad thing. I think it’s just another reason that we as fallible humans need the lesson of keeping focus on the main thing, and another reason why this song is so relatable.

Needle and Haystack Life

The phrase “needle in a haystack” that this song title was taken from makes it seem like the song may be quite simple. It has a cool, surface meaning for sure, but I think it operates on more that just that one level. The opening riff sets a really cool feel to the song right off the bat with its awesome reverb-y sound. Switchfoot is great at playing music that fits the lyrics and intentions of the song. This opening sends my thoughts out of myself and loosens the bonds that restricts my mind to thinking in terms of the physical world we occupy. The setting of the song as I see it is a man thinking about his life from a God’s-eye-view. Let’s unravel that a bit.

They open the song the way a couple of their songs open. “Hello, good morning, how ya do?”, “Welcome to the planet”, and in this song, “The world begins”. I actually understood this song better after coming across a version of this song that was old and not released (on the album). That version began with something like “Out of infinite time, out of infinite space, we are right now.” Combine this with the awesome, ambient style sounds rockin in the background and you get this immense view of all time and space. In this breathtaking view, a small speck is where “we are”. This verse alone makes me think about as much as most other songs.

            There are two main messages that this song manages to get through my occasionally thick skull. The first is that we really are insignificant dust particles with respect to all of space/time. While impossible for out dust particle minds to fully comprehend, I think it’s important to keep this in mind from time to time. It can be easy to get an inflated ego. So if you think about yourself as a needle in this haystack universe, pop goes the ego. The second message I get comes from the lines like “it’s no accident we’re here tonight, we are once in a lifetime”, and “become who you are, it happens once in a lifetime”. These lines scream to my ears (and hopefully yours) the idea that time is precious and we should spend it quite wisely. As a good friend of mine less eloquently put it, “LIKE HELLO, THOSE MOMENTS ARE GONE FOREVER, WE COULD HAVE USED THEM BETTER.” Time is mind boggling sometimes, especially when you consider the entire timeline of all existence, but the time we have shouldn’t be squandered.

            “Become who you are, it happens once in a lifetime”. Excellent line. This resonates with me because I try and focus on becoming who I am a lot. It may appear to be just a cool lyric that sounds all wisdom-y and whatever, but I believe I know what the writer means. The friend I quoted earlier is someone I met about a year ago. I have only known him for a year, and he has revealed to me a lot about myself just by him being himself. He really opened me up to what music is and what it could be. In all sorts of other ways I feel like he somehow inspired me to consider things about myself, and therefore learn about myself. This learning about yourself business doesn’t happen the same way every time, but it’s such a beautiful thing. I often wish I knew what my “purpose” was. I don’t believe God has a distinct mission for every single person, but I just want to know that I’m using my abilities for God in the best way that I can. I haven’t achieved this yet. I think we should all spare some energy to bettering ourselves by just being/becoming ourselves (our true selves). This has strayed a bit from what Jon may or may not have been thinking about while writing this, but this is still a blog.

            The overall them of this song (besides awesomeness) is that even when our time on earth is so insignificant, it really is significant. We could do so much with out time, or we could play video games 8 hours a day and pig out the other 2 hrs we spend awake. I really hope this song inspires all who hear it to take life seriously and to get up and flippin do something. This is a great song, and a great way to start off possibly their best album.

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

This song has a somber yet powerful feel to it. It begins with what sounds to me like a soft crashing of waves, a fitting opening for a bunch of surfers. The first verse sends a message of feeling cold, and lonely, and asking sunshine to come and help out with the struggles the writer is going through. This verse paints a picture of a guy looking out at the ocean in the night, thinking of the darkness and the struggles of having a cold heart, and hoping for the light to come.

As the chorus comes in with a simple and powerful drum beat, the writer uses two metaphors to describe people as not where we maybe should be. “Dry eyes in the pouring rain” to me implies that we are broken even though we don’t have to be. Because of Jon’s faith background, I believe that this line is about God’s grace and mercy being all around us and, in our stubbornness, we still are not perfect or even close. Then the beautiful title, the shadow proves the sunshine. This really brings together the concept this song seems to portray; in the midst of all the chaos of this world, all our brokenness, all the dark times, there is still goodness. The light is goodness, or God (however you’d like to look at it) and the dark is the troubles of this world/life. The writer furthers this analogy by saying that because there is a shadow, there has to be light somewhere otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing this shadow. The rest of the chorus basically repeats this idea in different words, as well as offering words of hope “hold fast to the break of daylight”. So Beautiful.

The second verse quickly follows the chorus, and is one of the few collections of Jon’s lyrics that make it impossible to ignore his faith as a Christian. He quotes those mysterious, confusing, and relatable words that Jesus cried out as he was dying on the cross. This verse continues the train of though I believe the writer was aboard as he wrote this. It starts with an “I’m messed up” sort of theme and now gives a “things look bad, don’t turn away from me Lord” message.

            After another chorus, the song progresses to what I like to think is the final stop on this train (of thought) ride. The bridge describes revelation, breakthrough. When I really listen to this song, most of the song paints a dull, elaborate color scheme. When the bridge makes its appearance, the writer’s color palette suddenly changes to a simple, elegant, sunlight/sunrise feel, much like the colors on the Nothing is Sound album artwork. This, and the final chorus, wraps up the song quite well.

            I believe this song came from a prayer. I think he was sitting near the ocean one early morning thinking about life, suffering, and brokenness. Then when the sun rose, the bridge was inspired. The whole feel of the music is a major part of how this picture was painted in my mind through the song. The music in the verses and chorus sounds soft and pensive, as if nothing is concrete, like it’s more of a feeling. Switchfoot is popular for songs like Dare you to Move, Meant to Live, Mess of Me, Stars, and other rockin’ and catchy songs. But it’s songs like The Shadow Proves the Sunshine that make them so much deeper than just a band with a catchy sound.