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.