Month of Music Day 15 Switchfoot Dare You to Move The Beautiful Letdown Welcome to the planet Welcome to existence Everyone's here Everyone's here Everybody's watching you now Everybody waits for you now What happens next What happens next [Chorus:] I dare you to move I dare you to move I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor I dare you to move I dare you to move Like today never happened Today never happened before Welcome to the fallout Welcome to resistance The tension is here Tension is here Between who you are and who you could be Between how it is and how it should be [Chorus:] I dare you to move I dare you to move I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor I dare you to move I dare you to move Like today never happened Today never happened before [Bridge:] Maybe redemption has stories to tell Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go? Salvation is here [Chorus:] I dare you to move I dare you to move I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor I dare you to move I dare you to move Like today never happened Today never happened Today never happened Today never happened before

My Take:

I got a sampler back in 1997 of a few indie bands on a label called Organic. I remember it, because it had Saturn and a couple of other songs I still hold near and dear to my heart. One of the songs was 'Chem 6A' by Switchfoot. I got most of the other albums of the sampler, but not The Legend of Chin. Still have no idea why, either, as it was as strong an effort as I'd ever heard from a band on their first album. I mean that, as in, ever. It was the best debut album I'd ever heard on the CD player at my local Christian Bookstore. As the months passed, the band came out with a second album. I never picked up New Way to be Human, even though it sounded even better than the first one. Again, I still have no idea why I never picked up those CDs, as I have two cases full of lesser bands. The timing was never right, it seemed. When Learning to Breathe came out, I had the running gag that Switchfoot was the best band I never got a CD of. And they were. Every time I heard them on really cool radio stations, I would think that the station was cool, and that Switchfoot was a really good band. Then 2004 rolled around. It wasn't that I'd been a Switchfoot fan for 7 years, or that they had such national exposure, it was that I really got sick of not having all the cools songs that I knew I was missing. So, when The Beautiful Letdown came out, I made it my life's work to get all four albums. I was going to make up for lost time. Let me say, after hearing the songs, I was majorly kicking myself. Golly Gee, these guys can rock! Add to that my preference for trios, and you've got years of regret building up. But I got over it quick. A funny thing happened on falling in love with my favorite Switchfoot song: there's two of them. In fact, except for one have "I" and the other not, they are nearly identical. New Way to be Human has 'I Dare You To Move.' and The Beautiful Letdown has 'Dare You To Move.' The thing is, they changed labels, and almost nobody'd heard 'I Dare You To Move.' I was going through the CDs, trying to cram 7 years of pleasure into a week, and I was doing a disk a day. The words of that song really got to me. But, since I was listening to it on two different albums, I was having a tough time figuring out where I'd heard it. All I really knew is that the words were powerful. Last summer I was at a loss. My life was spiraling out of control, and I was starting to loose it. Seriously. Then I started hearing these lyrics:

This is your life, are you who you want to be This is your life, are you who you want to be This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be When the world was younger and you had everything to lose

Now, just to have a cool lyric isn't enough. You need to have tons of them to have me idealize your band. I saw enough from the two or three songs off of samplers from each album that I really shoulda gotten these guys before they hit the big time. Well, no use trying to live in the past. But this song reminds me of how I do...ALL THE TIME!!! I'm so reluctant to take advantage of even the best opportunities. And even when I do take those opportunities, I keep wanting to sink the ship so nobody gets seasick. But, for some reason, I've always picked myself up from floor, no matter how I try to throw myself in front of the metaphorical bus. That's good enough for inclusion.And look at the bridge:

Maybe redemption has stories to tell Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell Where can you run to escape from yourself? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go? Salvation is here

Sort of means that I'm going to have to keep putting up with me being me some more. We all have to, because we're not going to escape out skins. Where you gonna go? If you've seen the video, there's one person going against the flow. Turning against the way that every one else is running. It's symbolic. I'm not an alter call kinda guy, but it does make you think, does it not? I dare you to move.

status: published
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
custom:
  podPressPostSpecific: 'a:6:{s:15:"itunes:subtitle";s:15:"##PostExcerpt##";s:14:"itunes:summary";s:15:"##PostExcerpt##";s:15:"itunes:keywords";s:17:"##WordPressCats##";s:13:"itunes:author";s:10:"##Global##";s:15:"itunes:explicit";s:7:"Default";s:12:"itunes:block";s:7:"Default";}'
  _utw_tags_0: 'a:2:{i:0;O:8:"stdClass":1:{s:3:"tag";s:4:"meme";}i:1;O:8:"stdClass":1:{s:3:"tag";s:5:"music";}}'
  similarterms: dare move happened today switchfoot gonna songs time life band heard floor album lift escape letdown albums picked years chorus