“Awakening” by Switchfoot, Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Everything Switchfoot has done musically rests in the shadows of their 2003 album, The Beautiful Letdown. While Letdown was sonically superior to their prior albums, the once surf-rock band still needed to finish evolving after their commercial blockbuster record. I'm biased to think that Nothing Is Sound is lyrically and musically superior to Letdown, but that may be because of how Letdown lost its novelty over the countless plays on youth group trips, on Christian radio, then on rock and alternative radio, and finally on pop radio and in some TV shows. Subsequent Switchfoot releases garnered less attention.

LAST WEEK SAW ME LIVING FOR NOTHING BUT DEADLINES. Two albums after Letdown, Oh! Gravity. attempted to bring Switchfoot back; this time with an experimental album with a flair for the avant-garde. The poppy second single stalled on the adult contemporary chart and was never released to pop and alternative radio as planned. But Switchfoot's fidelity to their Christian fans continued to drive record sales and concerts. And while the Guitar Hero-themed, star-studded video for "Awakening" never impacted MTV or VH1, it certainly did well on TVU. The music video starred actors Tony Hale, Adam Campbell, and Jayma Mays. Hale plays a straight-laced office worker who challenges his friend, Campbell, to a game resembling Guitar Hero, on the console, and the guitar controllers are made of cardboard. It was fun to see Buster Bluth rocking out with guyliner and his tie around his head. And around that time there was also talk about how Hale was actually a Christian in Hollywood, though he wasn't aligned with the evangelical coalition. Of course, Switchfoot's lead singer Jon Foreman was also one of the more liberal voices in the mainstream Christian Rock community.

MAYBE IT'S CALLED AMBITION. "Awakening" is a song about being revitalized. Many of Switchfoot's songs are anthems to "Dare You to Move." Today, "Awakening" gives me energy. Since the beginning of the 2022 school year, I've had a struggle to manage my time and make time for the things I feel matter the most. My blog has certainly suffered, but I'm proud of myself for keeping it going every day. Wednesday is my busiest day of the week, so I thought about pre-writing my Wednesday posts if I get a chance to get ahead. I thought about writing about sad songs or songs about having a bad day, just because if something goes wrong in the morning I tend to dwell on it all day. I often hum a mantra about being too busy and too tired on Wednesdays and other woe is me's. But today I remembered that sometimes on my busiest teaching day, the kids aren't too rowdy. Sometimes I can treat nothing as too urgent. A class doesn't need to be elaborate on a day like this. And sometimes there are classroom moments, even on my busiest day, that remind me why I chose this profession. Whether it's a spark in a student's eye when he or she realizes something, or a kind word from one classmate to another, or shared food with the staff, every day can have its little blessings if we look for it. That being said, I want to sleep in a little later tomorrow!

Read “Awakening” by Switchfoot on Genius.