Landon Bangerter 12/07/2017
Final Paper
Switchfoot
I am writing my final paper on Switchfoot. These guys have been my favorite band since I was in high school. They’re from San Diego, California and have been together as a group for 21 years. The group consists of five members. Jon Foreman, who is the lead singer and switches between lead and rhythm guitar; Tim Foreman, Jon’s little brother, who plays the bass; Chad Butler, who plays the drums; Jerome Fontamillas, who plays the keyboard and rhythm guitar; and Andrew (Drew) Shirley, who plays the lead guitar.
Jon Foreman and Chad Butler met each other in high school. They were on the same water polo team. Ever since, Jon, Tim, and Chad have all been really good friends and would jam every once in awhile. Come college, Jon and Chad were in two different bands that had just split up. So they decided that they were going to start their own band with Tim. They formed a band called Chin Up! named after Jon’s high school best friend, Willis Chin. They played a few shows are the San Diego area and it didn’t take long before they got some recognition from music industry veteran Charlie Peacock who owned a Christian indie label called Re:think Records. The group had decided to sign on with him and they changed their band name from Chin Up! to Switchfoot. All the members of the band are big surfers, and the term switchfoot means to switch your feet in surfing. Jon Foreman relates this to a deeper meaning, stating “We all love to surf and have been surfing all our lives so to us, the name made sense. To switch your feet means to take a new stance facing the opposite direction. It's about change and movement, a different way of approaching life and music.”
Switchfoot starting working on their first album, “The Legend of Chin,” which was recorded in Jon’s bedroom. Right before the release of the album, Re:think was bought out by Christian giant Sparrow Records. Switchfoot’s desire with Re:think was to expand their music from beyond the Christian music industry into mainstream audiences, but since Sparrow Records bought it out, their dreams were to be put on hold. Which was terribly frustrated to Switchfoot. Jon described it as a time where “half of who we were was lost.”
Nonetheless, Switchfoot still released their first three albums with Sparrow Records. “The Legend of Chin,” “New Way to Be Human,” and “Learning to Breathe” were the names of these albums. “Learning to Breathe” was by far the most successful of Switchfoot “early years,” going on to be certified gold and being nominated for a grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album. In 2002, a year after the release of “Learning to Breathe,” Switchfoot was asked to be apart of the soundtrack to the romantic-drama movie “A Walk to Remember.” This invite would help garner Switchfoot a lot of attention. Four of their songs were featured on the soundtrack, songs that include “I Dare You To Move,” “Learning to Breathe,” “You,” and “Only Hope.” “Only Hope” in fact would go on to be covered by actress Mandy Moore in the actual movie and making it a cult hit.
After the band’s success from appearing in “A Walk to Remember,” Switchfoot started getting offers from all kinds of record companies and ultimately signed with Columbia Records. It was that Switchfoot could finally break the Christian mold and reach out to audiences of all kinds. Switchfoot met Jerome Fontamillas while touring for “Learning to Breathe” and asked him to join the band. With Jerome, Switchfoot recorded “The Beautiful Letdown,” the album that finally broke them through to the mainstream. From this album, they had three hits, two of them receiving major radio play. “Dare You to Move,” which is a refined rewrite of “I Dare You to Move,” and “Meant to Live” became huge hits and eventually became the staple songs by which everyone knows Switchfoot. “This is Your Life,” while not as successful, was also a successful hit. “The Beautiful Letdown” went to be Switchfoot’s only album to be certified platinum, selling 2 million copies. While touring for the album, the band toured with Drew Shirley, whom they eventually asked to join the band as the lead guitarist. Ever since then, the five members of the band has been inseperable.
A couple years later in 2005, Switchfoot released “Nothing is Sound.” The album presented itself to be more edgy, dark, densely layered, and guitar-heavy than any of their previous works. The album went on to be certified gold and it produced two hits, one of them receiving major radio play. “Stars” was the big hit, playing all across the nation while the less successful “We Are One Tonight” still garnered some recognition. This similar sound Switchfoot developed would stick with them for their next three albums. “Oh! Gravity” would be their next album and produced a hit appropriately titled “Oh! Gravity.” “Hello Hurricane” is the album that came after in 2009 and it had 4 hits, the most from the band for any album. The hits included “Mess of Me,” “The Sound (John M. Perkins’ Blues),” “Your Love is a Song,” and “Bullet Soul.” The album “Vice Verses” would be created in 2011 and it fabricates three hits titled “Dark Horses,” “Afterlife,” and “The Original.”
Switchfoot would then follow the trend most rock bands have been going through for the past few years, and that is to produce a new sound that’s more electronic and contains more synthesizers. This sound would be present in their next two albums. The first of these was “Fading West,” which produced the hit “Who We Are.” Two years after that, Switchfoot had “Where the Light Shines Through,” their latest album which they made last year. That would have three hits, “Float,” “Shake This Feeling,” and “If the House Burns Down Tonight.”
Switchfoot is a rock band that’s still going strong. They’re constantly donating themselves to charity events and trying to build the world to be better. They’re still creating new music and have further plans to release more albums in the future.
References
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