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The development of my own personal music taste really began when I got my first ever MP3 player from my aunt and uncle for Christmas when I was maybe 9 or 10. The only albums loaded up were 2 Switchfoot albums: The Beautiful Letdown and Learning to Breathe, Portable Sounds by Toby Mac, and the soundtrack to Cars. Outside of that it was a few classic rock songs and some country.
Pretty soon I was thrust into this world of early 2000s edgy alt-Christian music and absolutely loved the way Switchfoot (and eventually other artists I found including NeedToBreathe, Kings Kaleidoscope, etc.) would write about themes of faith while also acknowledging life and faith is not always sunshine and rainbows. It’s ugly and messy but all the better for that
Every July my family (including the aunt and uncle I got my MP3 player from) would go on a big vacation together to a timeshare in the Ozarks. The timeshare had this elevated back porch looking over the lake we would go tubing on surrounded by beautiful hills and trees. I’d spend many nights out there listening to my music and would often fall asleep on the couch there and wake up to dozens of mosquito bites. When I was younger it was a lot of Switchfoot, in my early teens there was a lot of The Fray, Coldplay, and The Script, and certainly some Jon once I found him in 2015/2016.
Fast forward to 2023, I’ve just graduated from undergrad and am planning to go back for grad school. While all my classmates were taking 6-figure jobs, I took an internship without pay working with SportsTech startups (an industry I have always had a passion for). I was feeling very strongly about not wanting to take a traditional path and also in a strange place in my faith that I felt very secure in but that my family didn’t fully understand. My future felt really unsure but I was very hopeful.
On the last day of the trip we are driving home from dinner when I open Instagram and see Jon has posted for the first time in a long time. I open the post and yell loud enough to cause my mom to swerve while she’s driving. It was the most insane crossover episode in my music tastes and seasons of life to see Jon talk about how Meant to Live had impacted him and to see that he had been asked to write a cover. I listened to the song alone that night on the same balcony and cried.
It’s incredible how music can mark parts of your life and to think about how one song can mark so many different parts of so many different people’s lives. Thank you Switchfoot for inviting Jon to cover Meant to Live and thank you Jon for the beautiful rendition.
“Over-intellectualizing the mundane is my creative exercise.” -Virgil Abloh
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The development of my own personal music taste really began when I got my first ever MP3 player from my aunt and uncle for Christmas when I was maybe 9 or 10. The only albums loaded up were 2 Switchfoot albums: The Beautiful Letdown and Learning to Breathe, Portable Sounds by Toby Mac, and the soundtrack to Cars. Outside of that it was a few classic rock songs and some country.
Pretty soon I was thrust into this world of early 2000s edgy alt-Christian music and absolutely loved the way Switchfoot (and eventually other artists I found including NeedToBreathe, Kings Kaleidoscope, etc.) would write about themes of faith while also acknowledging life and faith is not always sunshine and rainbows. It’s ugly and messy but all the better for that
Every July my family (including the aunt and uncle I got my MP3 player from) would go on a big vacation together to a timeshare in the Ozarks. The timeshare had this elevated back porch looking over the lake we would go tubing on surrounded by beautiful hills and trees. I’d spend many nights out there listening to my music and would often fall asleep on the couch there and wake up to dozens of mosquito bites. When I was younger it was a lot of Switchfoot, in my early teens there was a lot of The Fray, Coldplay, and The Script, and certainly some Jon once I found him in 2015/2016.
Fast forward to 2023, I’ve just graduated from undergrad and am planning to go back for grad school. While all my classmates were taking 6-figure jobs, I took an internship without pay working with SportsTech startups (an industry I have always had a passion for). I was feeling very strongly about not wanting to take a traditional path and also in a strange place in my faith that I felt very secure in but that my family didn’t fully understand. My future felt really unsure but I was very hopeful.
On the last day of the trip we are driving home from dinner when I open Instagram and see Jon has posted for the first time in a long time. I open the post and yell loud enough to cause my mom to swerve while she’s driving. It was the most insane crossover episode in my music tastes and seasons of life to see Jon talk about how Meant to Live had impacted him and to see that he had been asked to write a cover. I listened to the song alone that night on the same balcony and cried.
It’s incredible how music can mark parts of your life and to think about how one song can mark so many different parts of so many different people’s lives. Thank you Switchfoot for inviting Jon to cover Meant to Live and thank you Jon for the beautiful rendition.
@GSPStudent619 Forrest Frank performed Meant to Live at his concert I went to, Forrest collabed with Tori Kelly on his last album and ran into Jon Forman at a airport do to delayed flights, God is working in music and its so exciting to see.
Boy Mystic raised from the Wilkins baby
