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.
