Although more than a dozen of the tracks on 'The Best Yet' are drawn from Switchfoot's Columbia years - The Beautiful Letdown (2003), Nothing Is Sound (2005), and Oh! Gravity. (2006) - the collection also reflects the band's earlier years. After playing only a handful of gigs around southern California as Chin Up, the band was signed to Charlie Peacock's new indie label, re:Think Records in 1997.
Renaming themselves Switchfoot (a surfing term), the band released their debut album in June 1997, The Legend Of Chin (with "Concrete Girl"). That year, they received an ASCAP Award and San Diego Music Award, both for Best New Artist. The industry began to take notice of Switchfoot with their second album for the re:Think label, 1999's New Way To Be Human ("Only Hope", "Company Car"). With New Way To Be Human, Switchfoot cracked for the first time the Billboard Heatseekers chart (at #31).
The next album, 2000's Learning To Breathe (with "Learning to Breathe" and "Love Is the Movement") again scaled the Heatseekers chart (#34) and received a Grammy Award nomination. At the San Diego Music Awards, they won Best Pop Album and the band won Best Pop Artist. In 2001, Jon Foreman went on to win the Les Paul Horizon Award for the Most Promising Up-and-Coming Guitarist.
A giant break came in 2002, with A Walk To Remember, the high school love story starring Mandy Moore. The movie soundtrack featured four cuts by Switchfoot, including "You" (from The Legend Of Chin), "Only Hope", "Learning to Breathe", and a new song, "Dare You To Move". In addition to Switchfoot's original version of "Only Hope", Mandy Moore recorded a version that she sang in the film.
Switchfoot was on the rise. Another San Diego Music Award, Best Adult Alternative Artist for 2002, and the exposure from the movie led to their signing later on in 2002 with Columbia. The Beautiful Letdown, their first major label album, became a pop sensation, riding into the Top 20 (#16) on the Billboard 200 chart but it do not happen overnight. It took nearly a year for Switchfoot to notch their first top 40 radio hit in 2004 with "Meant To Live", which also climbed into the top 5 on alternative radio and earned RIAA gold status. A second Top 5 hit followed six months later with "Dare You To Move," which made ASCAP's Top 50 list of Most Performed Songs of 2005.
In addition to "Dare You To Move" and "Meant To Live", 'The Best Yet' also turns to The Beautiful Letdown for four other tracks: "This Is Your Life", "On Fire", "Twenty-Four", and the title cut, "The Beautiful Letdown". At the San Diego Music Awards, the recording earned Best Pop Album and Album of the Year honors, as well as Song of the Year for "Dare You To Move".
The Beautiful Letdown was certified RIAA double-platinum in December 2004, and Switchfoot followed up less than a year later with the RIAA gold Nothing Is Sound, which debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200. In addition to the RIAA gold single "Stars", the album was the source for "Lonely Nation" and "The Shadow Proves The Sunshine".
Switchfoot's final Columbia album was 2006's Oh! Gravity. (featuring the title track, "Dirty Second Hands" and the hit single "Awakening"). The album rose to #1 at iTunes, #18 on the Billboard 200 and was named Album Of the Year at the San Diego Music Awards in 2007. Switchfoot's legions of dedicated fans eagerly anticipate their band's new independent release in the spring of 2009.
