Tow #21: Visual Text: The Beautiful Letdown Album Cover

In 2003, The Beautiful Letdown became the fourth studio album released by Switchfoot. This album marks the transformation from a locally famous San Diego band to a nationwide mainstream rock band. After the release of the hit singles "Meant to Live" and "Dare You to Move" Switchfoot became much more famous and needed an album cover to back it up in order for more people to buy their album and become fans. The Beautiful Letdown album cover is able to summarize the album's sound while maintaining a visually attractive appeal through a contrast of color and a simple design. The Beautiful Letdown, the song, is about the fact that generally no matter how many good things happen to a person, they are still letdown by life. However, it is beautiful because those letdowns are often bittersweet as they teach us lessons and make us better people. The contrast of color portrays that song and the entire album. This is because every song on the album is either about the good or bad in life, or both. The bottom half of the album is an ugly yellow-brown color filled with dirt, but as you move your eyes upward, the color becomes a beautiful clear sky. This has religious symbolism that shows that down on earth everything lets people down, but as you get closer and closer to the end of your life you get closer to heaven in the sky, which is symbolized through the clear blue color at the top. This summarizes the album because life is a letdown sometimes. This is also visually appealing because the change of color pops out on a shelf, so a consumer would likely stop to look at it rather than walk past it. In addition to the color, the simplicity of the album cover summarizes the album and is visually appealing. The only subject on the cover is a old electric guitar at the bottom of an empty pool. It symbolizes the letdown of life, but also the simplicity of their music. Switchfoot did not try to become mainstream, they just wrote whatever songs came to them. The simplicity of the album cover reflects their idea of simple yet great music. The simplicity is also visually attractive because it is a contrast to album covers that are crazy and complex, so the uniqueness of this album being simple would make someone stop to pick up the CD. The Beautiful Letdown's album cover was an effective one that marked the transition from local to national where the simple color and design truly summarized the sound of the album.