Twenty years ago, an up-and-coming SoCal alt-rock outfit called Switchfoot took a gut punch. The band had just turned in The Beautiful Letdown, which was set to release as their major label debut on Columbia Records. Instead, upon hearing the album, the label rejected it and dropped Switchfoot from the artist roster, shuffling the act to its smaller Red Ink subsidiary and essentially leaving them to figure out where to go from there.
“It was mainly the person at the very top of Sony Records at the time,” singer and primary songwriter Jon Foreman recalls. “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: We don’t care what anyone else thinks,” the 47-year-old musician continues. “We think these songs need to be heard. We believe in them and don’t care what the man at the top of the building says about them. We’re going to put them out anyway.”
So The Beautiful Letdown saw the light of day in February 2003 — and seemingly against all odds, a pair of singles, “Meant to Live” and “Dare You to Move,” broke through the radio airwaves and the album became a double-platinum hit.
Now, two decades later, there’s another chapter to the band’s landmark album. In May, Switchfoot released a newly re-recorded version called The Beautiful Letdown (Our Version). September saw the release of a deluxe edition, adding a second disc with contributions from artists like the Jonas Brothers, Owl City, Ryan Tedder and Jon Bellion — each recording their own version of a song from the original LP.
“I mean, what a gift,” Foreman says. “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.”
‘Embracing the unknown’
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 a string of records that sold in respectable numbers. But original members Foreman, his brother Tim on bass and Chad Butler on drums were reaching a time when they had to choose between music and other paths in life.
“Our drummer just got married. 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 … having those conversations about getting married, and playing in a band that sells 150 tickets somewhere doesn’t really give much inspiration for starting a family,” Foreman says. “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.’”
But that didn’t happen. A double-platinum album later, Switchfoot were making plans for a future in music. Their 2005 follow-up Nothing Is Sound went gold, and the band continued to build a following through touring and more than half a dozen additional studio efforts, securing a place as one of the most successful Christian rock crossovers of the 21st century.
Revisiting that first big breakthrough on The Beautiful Letdown (Our Version), the songs largely stick to the original arrangements. But the outside artists who recorded the tracks for the deluxe edition frequently take these familiar favorites to new places. Bellion’s version of the hit single “Meant to Live” is reimagined as a string-driven ballad, while Dayglow puts a poppier spin on the rocker “Adding to the Noise” with a playful beat and synths in place of the driving guitars.
With the deluxe version now available, the third piece of the 20th anniversary celebration of The Beautiful Letdown is underway with a tour coming to Denver’s Ogden Theatre on Nov. 2. Featuring support from local emo-rock outfit A Place for Owls, the band will perform the album front to back alongside a smattering of additional songs.
“This is the first time we’ve ever done a tour where we will stick to the set list. That’s the way the album is,” Foreman says. “So we’ll find other ways to make the changes, I suppose, along the way. I mean, that’s what I love about live music: embracing the unknown and the chaos.”
ON THE BILL: Switchfoot – The Beautiful Letdown Anniversary Tour with A Place for Owls. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, Ogden Theatre, 935 E. Colfax Ave., Denver. Tickets here.
