Switchfoot Needs a Big Hit
Posted June 26, 2006 — in Music News
Switchfoot will head back into the studio in November to record a new record. The last record “Nothing is Sound” sold a disappointing 526,000 while its predecessor “The Beautiful Letdown” sold 2.6 million. Some say The album got off to a rough start when it was one of 15 titles recalled by Sony BMG because software on the CDs behaved like spyware. C’mon!…The new record was mediocre and the lead off single failed to react which was probably the main culprit rather than the spyware program.
Nothing is Sound was a huge disappointment indeed. Regardless of what people might say about the recall affecting the sales, it was indeed mediocre in terms of the music.
Of course, Beautiful Letdown was worked a lot longer AND had songs that the band wrote years ago during their Sparrow (EMI/CMG) days.
Hopefully Nothing is Sound is just a sophomore slump for the band. Hope they can write a hit single for the next album.
Comment by BJ — June 26, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
Get your facts straight. Sony paid for those 2 million sold. They were selling the cd for 6 bucks evrywhere. the money columbia/red spent of advertising was insane. The band will never make money with Sony. Sony still lost money on Letdown. That is a fact.
Comment by paul — June 26, 2006 @ 7:22 pm
Meant To Live was worked for how long? I know it was well over a year. It charted at Specialty and then went to Mainstream Rock. It did relatively well there and then hit the pop stations. Then all hell broke loose and you couldn’t escape them. Unfortunately for Switchfoot I think they were set up to be a one hit wonder (even though 2 singles came off that record, only one will be remembered). That just seems to be how things go now though, work the song harder than you work the band. You might get a number one song out of it, but no one will care about the band after it falls off the charts.
In all honesty, I didn’t even know they released Nothing Is Sound, so I couldn’t say whether its any good or not. Switchfoot has always been a consistently good band and I was curious to see how they would do in the mainstream, but it sounds like they made some bad deals, yes?
Comment by AJ-KOAR — June 27, 2006 @ 6:05 am
Well, the second album lived up to it’s predecessor’s title. Even having a dual disc package didn’t help. On the flipside, 500+ in sales would be a success to others.
Comment by Scott — June 27, 2006 @ 11:32 am
well, it could be a lot worse. they could be trapt
Comment by dsf — June 28, 2006 @ 7:49 am
the album, with the exception of a few tracks, was mediocre AT BEST… so you can’t really be all that surprised that it flopped.
Comment by pete — July 3, 2006 @ 7:04 pm
I love Switchfoot! They are a bunch of really great guys! Definitely a fan!
Comment by Ellicea — July 5, 2006 @ 3:49 pm
I thought the album was decent, maybe even a little better than Beautiful Letdown. Remember, what helped Meant to Live was a memorable track in a popular movie. Nothing is Sound didn’t have anything like that to propel some of its better material. Still, this was a good effort, if not entirely well supported in sales.
Comment by Rick — July 6, 2006 @ 10:53 pm