Two decades ago, Switchfoot took a gut punch after turning in “The Beautiful Letdown,” the album the band had just finished and was set to release as its major label debut on Columbia Records.
Instead, upon hearing the album, the label rejected the album, dropped Switchfoot from the Columbia artist roster, moved the band to the smaller Red Ink subsidiary and essentially left the band to figure out where to go from there.
“It was mainly the person at the very top of Sony Records at the time,” Switchfoot singer and primary songwriter Jon Foreman said in a video interview. “When someone in that position says you guys have no hits and I want to drop you, you second guess yourself. You think man, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these songs aren’t what I think they are.
“But then a week later, after coming together and really talking it through, we came to the conclusion, I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” he said. “I think these songs need to be heard. I believe in them and I don’t care what the man at the top of the building says about them. We’re going to put them out anyway. I look back at that story and that season and I’m really thankful that it happened. I think it was a true galvanizing time for us to really come together and remember why we’re doing it in the first place.”
So “The Beautiful Letdown” got released in 2003, and seemingly against all odds, a pair of singles, “Meant To Live” and “Dare You to Move,” connected at radio and the album became a double platinum breakthrough hit.
Now, 22 years later, there’s another chapter to “The Beautiful Letdown.” In May 2023, Switchfoot released a newly re-recorded version of the original album under the title “The Beautiful Letdown (Our Version).” That was followed by a deluxe edition of the 20th anniversary version of the album. It added a second disc on which a variety of contemporary music acts — including the Jonas Brothers, Owl City, Ryan Tedder and Jon Bellion — have each recorded their own version of a song from the original album.
This second disc is further proof of how impactful “The Beautiful Letdown” became after its original release.
“It started in a really pretty organic way,” Foreman said of this all-star tribute to Switchfoot and the original version of “The Beautiful Letdown.” “We just had a couple of conversations with people when the album first, when we were (first) celebrating the 20 years. They were hitting us up saying ‘Congrats, that record really meant a lot to me. It’s the reason why I started playing music’ or ‘That song got me through some hard times,’ whatever it was. So we replied back to a few of them and then reached out to a couple of friends saying maybe we could do a couple of these songs as if they were re-imagined by these artists that were inspired by them.”
Foreman didn’t expect this idea to turn into something so substantial.
“These are all really busy people that have their own lives and families and careers to worry about,” he said. “So we were expecting a lot of people saying ‘Man, it sounds like an amazing project, but unfortunately we can’t pull it off this year.’ That’s kind of what I thought we were going to have. But it was not that. It was a lot of people saying ‘Yeah, I’m in, let’s go.’
“I mean, what a gift!” Foreman said. “More than a Grammy or those kinds of awards, to have your peers, people that you look up to and really respect, singing your songs, it’s a high honor.”
The original “Beautiful Letdown” stands as a pivotal album in Switchfoot’s career. At the time, the band had made an impact on the Christian music scene, with three albums that had sold in respectable numbers. But original members Foreman, his brother Tim Foreman (bass) and Chad Butler (drums) were reaching a time in their lives when they had to choose between music and other paths in life.
The band, which by then had added Jerome Fontamillas (guitar/keyboards) to the lineup, decided to make “The Beautiful Letdown” thinking more likely than not, it would be the final Switchfoot album.
“We’re thinking our drummer just got married,” Foreman said. “My brother and I had dropped out of school to try and chase this thing down, but we’re at this point (in our) mid-20s, trying to think like, I had just moved out and (was) renting a place, having those conversations about getting married. And, you know, playing in a band that sells 150 tickets somewhere doesn’t really give much inspiration for starting a family. It was really this thing where we’re at a crossroads. We thought, OK, this will probably be our last album. We’ll make the record and then break up and get real jobs.”
A double-platinum album later, the guys in Switchfoot were making plans for their future in music. The next album, “Nothing Is Sound,” went gold and was followed by “Oh, Gravity” in 2006 before Switchfoot switched labels to Atlantic and in 2009 released “Hello Hurricane.” That album became another double-platinum hit and also won a Grammy for Best Rock Gospel Album. The band has since released five more albums, solidifying a place as a popular act within both mainstream and Christian music scenes that can be reliably expected to deliver honest and musically compelling albums and inspired live shows. The initial plan for the 20th anniversary of “The Beautiful Letdown” was for Switchfoot to re-record the album and see what two decades of musical growth and experience did for the songs.
“The original was done so fast, and we were pretty young. And (producer John) Fields was really young as well,” Foreman said. “We’ve all learned so much over the course of a couple of decades. So some things are immediately easy to improve upon — drum tones and mix elements. I think one of the bigger things for me was feeling like as a singer, there are more places (now) that I can go to.
“It really still, there are very few cringe moments on this album,” he said approvingly of the original album.
Switchfoot’s new versions of “The Beautiful Letdown” songs stick largely to the original arrangements. But the outside artists who recorded the songs for the deluxe edition frequently take the “Beautiful Letdown” songs to markedly different places. Bellion’s version of the edgy hit single “Meant To Live” is reimagined as a string-filled ballad, while Dayglow puts a poppier spin on the rocker “Adding To The Noise,” with a playful, tinny beat and synthetic/electronic tones replacing the guitars.
Having done an extensive tour during which Switchfoot played “The Beautiful Letdown” front to back, along with a selection of other songs, the band is doing a short run of shows this spring, including an April 23 date at the Pima County Fair. If Switchfoot follow usual practices, fans can expect some surprises in the show.
“I think something about us that’s unusual as a band is that we will change the set list every night,” Foreman said. “Even during the night, halfway through the show we’ll mix things around. You know, you feel the room, I think that’s the beautiful thing about live music for me. There are some people that play to tracks and everything is scripted. For me, I love it when that’s not the case.”
Switchfoot
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23
WHERE: Pima County Fair, 11300 S. Houghton Road, Tucson
COST: $25
INFO: pimacountyfair.com
