Switchfoot's Christian by faith, not by genre

Record companies don't always know what they've got. Take the case of Switchfoot.

When Columbia first signed the rock group from a Christian music company called Sparrow, it had so little faith that it issued the band's CD The Beautiful Letdown on its tiny farm imprint, Red. It also let Sparrow retain rights to sell the band to the Christian market.

"We were a small priority," says frontman Jon Foreman, 27. "But that allowed us to be ourselves and grow at our own rate."

That rate turned out to yield huge results. The group is scheduled to perform at the annual Y-100 Jingle Ball on Sunday at Sunrise's Office Depot Center. Switchfoot's latest album has been on the charts for 88 weeks, the longest run of any band in Billboard's Top 40. They've sold more than 1,140,000 CDs. More than a year after it first sneaked onto the charts, Letdown is No. 42 this week.

The record is powered by Meant to Live, a single that peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's Adult Top 40, and Dare You to Move, which is No. 18 this week on Billboard's Hot 100.

The San Diego-based foursome, which also includes Foreman's brother Tim on bass, first bonded through their mutual love of surfing.

The band's name comes from a term for switching to the foot you don't usually emphasize on your board.

"I liked the fact that it implies change, which is something I'm looking for -- in the songs and in the world," Foreman says.

The singer's first songs were inspired by the spiritual yearning of U2. Though they clicked with Christian rockers, Switchfoot invited suspicion from secular critics, as have other groups with religious backgrounds, like Creed or Evanescence.

"The hardest part is the pigeonholing," the singer says. "I'm a Christian by faith, not by genre."

But his beliefs inform every aspect of the music. For example, Foreman says, he based his single Meant to Live on the T.S. Eliot poem The Hollow Men.

"The overall sentiment of the poem is one of desperation and apathy," the singer explains. "But the hopeless aspects of life exist to make us wonder what else out there could be purposeful."