Switchfoot And The Music For Ceiling-Starers

“We were meant to live for so much more.” 

Jon Foreman, frontman of the band Switchfoot, wrote those words in 2003 for a song called “Meant to Live.” To this day, I can’t help but feel something when I hear it. 

I’ve been listening to Switchfoot since I was little. I couldn’t tell you the first time I heard them. Their most popular album, “The Beautiful Letdown,” turns 20 years old this year. I was 2 years old when it came out. 

To me, Switchfoot music sounds like what it feels like to be 15. Now don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean that their music sounds immature or like it was created for an immature audience. I don’t think that at all. What I mean is that Switchfoot was the band I turned to when I didn’t know what to do with the abundance of angst that seems to grip everyone as soon as they get to high school. 

I remember laying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, wrestling with all the things that people wrestle with when they lay in their beds and stare at the ceiling. In a way, being 15 is brutal; it’s the age when you start to seriously ask yourself who you are, but it’s also the age when you feel most unhappy with the answer. 

Do you remember that angst? Do you remember listening to songs and thinking they were somehow about you? 

Not all bands stick around in people’s lives the way Switchfoot has for me. Some artists come and go. Some music is created just to follow a trend or simply as an attempt to get a hit. I’ve thought a lot about what makes some bands and musical artists stand the test of time when others do not. I’m not sure what it is but I have an idea. I call it “the heart theory,” and this is the gist of it: 

I think listeners can tell when a song really has heart. Obviously, some songwriters are more talented than others, some people are better at instruments than others and not everyone has access to good producers. But regardless of anything else, some songs just feel like they were written with heart and some don’t. 

This past summer, I went to a Switchfoot concert and got there early enough to make it to the front row: childhood dream come true. A little in front of me, to the right, was a dad (probably mid 30s) and his young son.

“It’s his first rock show,” he explained to the guy standing next to him.

Throughout the concert, this dad shouted every lyric like his life depended on it. So did I. We might not have had much in common, but we had this: we could hear the heart in every word. 

You might hear heart in songs that I don’t hear it in and vice versa. Remember, this is just a theory. But it’s a start, and to me it just makes sense. How else could I and a 30-something-year-old dad stand in the same venue and earnestly sing along with every word of each song, matching each other perfectly in passion and intensity? When you hear the heart in a song, you know it. 

If you’re any good at math, you’ve probably realized that I was a bit late to the Switchfoot party. By the time I was 15, their most popular years were behind them, and to be honest, I remember getting some surprised looks during the “What’s your favorite band?” conversations. It’s weird to have more in common with your friend’s grungy older brother than you do with your friend, but I didn’t care. Switchfoot spoke to me in a way other bands didn’t. When I listened, I felt like I was hearing my own internal dialogue sung back to me. I still feel that way. I think everyone at the concert felt that way. 

Something I love about music, in general, is that it punches at a layer underneath all the things we use to divide ourselves. Generational differences, wealth, politics and status all lose their importance when the right song comes on. I think Switchfoot has written a few of the right songs. 

I’m not the same person I was when I was 15. A lot has changed since then. But even now, when I hear Jon Foreman sing, “This is your life, are you who you wanna be?” it’s like I’m transported back in time, to my bedroom at my house, where I lay once again, staring at the ceiling, feeling every bit as much angst as I ever have. 

You can listen to Switchfoot on Apple Music or Spotify.