Track-By-Track: Switchfoot

Frontman JON FOREMAN walks us through every song on SWITCHFOOT’s Hello Hurricane.



“The storms of this life shatter our plans. They tear through our world and destroy our hopes and dreams. They ruin sunny days, flatten the structures we depend on, and shock our world-views. Hello Hurricane is an attempt to sing into the storm. It’s a declaration: you can’t silence my love.”



Needle And Haystack Life

“Here’s a song that epitomizes the way that we recorded this record. One of the reasons we built our own studio was to enable productive experimentation like this without paying for it by the hour. "Needle" felt like a song that I wanted to sing every night–with an element of the horizon built into the song.”



Mess Of Me

“The song attempts to explore the darkest parts of the human animal and transcend them, rising above these gloomy moments to find true life. If you’re Sigmund Freud, you call these darker urges the death drive. If you’re St. Paul, you talk about doing the things you don’t want to do. We’ve all thought about the quick fix: that special something/someone that could take the pain away.”



Your Love Is A Song

“For me, melody is a constant. I’m always buzzing with some hook or rhythm or idea. Sometimes I imagine the entire universe as a song or an incredibly elaborate symphony–the sun is setting, there’s a kid staring at the evening train going by. It’s a living symphony.”



The Sound (John M. Perkins’ Blues)

“This was the last-minute addition to the record. Lyrically, I feel like this song is a corollary of ‘Hello Hurricane.’ I was reading a book at the time, Let Justice Roll Down–it’s the autobiography of [American civil rights activist] John Perkins. It was given to me by a friend. I was struck by Perkins’ honesty and humility.”



Enough To Let Me Go

“This one started with the guitar hook that I came up with during soundcheck. However, most of the song took shape in a hotel room in Australia. I was thinking about how love, (not just lust or codependency that commonly flood the tunes on the airways) actually involves quite a bit of faith.”



Free

“I’m pretty sure that I wrote this one in an elevator. Tim [Foreman, bass] says that the seed of it was written by the time the elevator ride was over. I don’t remember that. I just wanted to have a song on the record-and to play live–that captured a reinterpretation of the blues.”



Hello Hurricane

“Last year, we helped with Habitat for Humanity and contributed to building a house for a woman who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. Her mantra was this: ‘I walked out of my house and my life in New Orleans on my own legs. I’m going to walk into this one the same way.’ This is the spirit that I wanted to capture with this song, and moreover with this record. The storms of life might take my house, my loved ones or even my life– but they cannot silence my love.”



Always

“I’m continually searching for meaning in my life. Why am I here? Why is there so much pain? The music becomes a place for the cognitive dissonance to chew away at something other than a broken heart or an ulcer. The music becomes a place to sort through the dark and the light.”



Bullet Soul

“This song is loosely based on a poem that I wrote a few years back. You only get one shot with your bullet soul. I want to make all that I can out of my one shot.”



Yet

“’Yet’ was written on an old National steel guitar that I bought at a pawn shop on tour. It was originally a finger-picking tune played with a slide and very unlike the version on the record. The song is about hope. Hope is always reaching towards the future and reaching for what has not yet come to pass.”



Sing It Out

“This song is singing about itself–struggling for melody, for life, for meaning. Singing about rebirth, the song spends most of its time in the grave and comes to a bright glorious finish, held out until the very end.”



Red Eyes

“At the end of the record, there’s a reprise that goes back to the first song. For me, this is a reminder of the repetitive nature of all that we call life: wonder, surrender, joy, forgiveness, hope. This life is so fragile. At any instance, one of us could slip beyond this life into the infinite unknown.” alt