Nothing Is Sound

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Nothing Is Sound
Nothing Is Sound cover
Studio album by Switchfoot
Released September 13, 2005
Recorded 2004/2005
Genre Alternative Rock
Hard Rock 
Length      = 50:54
Label Columbia/Sony BMG
Producer(s) John Fields
Professional reviews
Switchfoot chronology
The Beautiful Letdown
(2003)		 Nothing Is Sound
(2005)		 Oh! Gravity.
(2006)


Nothing Is Sound is the fifth studio album by the band Switchfoot. It was released on September 13, 2005, and debuted at #3 on Billboard 200[1] and #1 on Billboard Top Internet Albums. The double platinum-selling alternative rockers penned the songs during downtime on a headlining tour of North America. The first single from this album was "Stars," which was the #1 most added song on Modern Rock Radio, and is currently heard on alternative rock stations. A second single "We Are One Tonight" was released in early 2006.

There was some controversy over the inclusion of XCP copy protection on the disc, which led to a posting by a Switchfoot member on their website about ways to get around it (which Columbia records pormptly removed). This in turn led to the CD being recalled to remove the protection.

The DualDisc version of this album has also been released, at the same time, which did not contain the XCP software.

Contents

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Lonely Nation" – 3:44
  2. "Stars" – 4:20
  3. "Happy Is a Yuppie Word" – 4:49
  4. "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine" – 5:04
  5. "Easier Than Love" – 4:28
  6. "The Blues" – 5:15
  7. "The Setting Sun" – 4:24
  8. "Politicians" – 3:26
  9. "Golden" – 3:35
  10. "The Fatal Wound" – 2:44
  11. "We Are One Tonight" – 4:39
  12. "Daisy" – 4:20

[edit] Success

In October, just over a month after its original release date, Nothing Is Sound was certified gold by the RIAA, meaning that it had shipped at least 500,000 copies. The incredible pacing tapered off significantly, following the revelation of Sony's rootkit on the disks. The November 1st, 2006 edition of Billboard magazine reported that Nothing Is Sound had sold 549,000 units. Despite the obstacles to continued sales, its debut position on the Billboard 200 at number three is the highest that any Switchfoot album has ever placed. "Stars" was the best charting single of the album, reaching as high as 16 on the modern rock chart, and number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100.

[edit] Music videos

Switchfoot's first music video from this album is "Stars", which was filmed almost entirely underwater. Switchfoot has since released a live video version of "Stars", and another two videos for the album's second single "We Are One Tonight". The band also filmed a video for the song Happy Is a Yuppie Word in anticipation of it being released as the first single. However, it was never released to the mainstream and can now be found on the DVD Switchfootage 2. Switchfootage 2 showed brief glimpses of an unreleased "Lonely Nation" video, and also, the band mentioned shooting an unreleased "Politicians" video.

  • Stars
  • We Are One Tonight
  • The Blues (On Switchfootage 2)
  • Happy Is A Yuppie Word (On Switchfootage 2)[1]
  • Lonely Nation (unreleased)
  • Politicians (unreleased)

[edit] Extra songs

In addition to the mainstay tracks listed above, the album was released with extra material at different stores.

  • Albums purchased at Target stores contained an extra track called "Goodnight Punk". The song is merely vocals and a piano and was recorded in one take. The track was originally considered for the The Beautiful Letdown album but was cut from the final selection.
  • Albums purchased at Wal-Mart contained a Christmas song called "Old Borego" as a bonus track, which Jon Foreman had penned earlier for a charity album released locally in the band's hometown of San Diego.
  • In Japan the album was released with an alternative version of "Dare You to Move" which is featured during a montage in the band's DVD "Switchfootage", along with the unreleased track "Monday Comes Around."
  • iTunes has an acoustic version of "Stars" available with purchase of the album.

[edit] Copy protection

In November 2005, it was revealed that Sony was distributing albums with Extended Copy Protection, a controversial feature that automatically installed rootkit software on any Microsoft Windows machine upon insertion of the disc. In addition to preventing the CDs contents from being copied, it was also revealed that the software reported the users' listening habits back to Sony and also exposed the computer to malicious attacks that exploited insecure features of the rootkit software. Though Sony refused to release a list of the affected CDs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation identified Nothing Is Sound as one of the discs with the invasive software.

Bassist Tim Foreman posted a way around the protection on the bands message boards[2]. The original post was soon deleted, which caused some people to speculate that Sony would sue the band over this issue.[3] However no legal action has been taken. Jon Foreman would later say that he felt the album was "tainted" by this[4].

An additional copy protection problem was found on some of the disks that were produced by EMI. These disks contained Cactus Data Shield copy protection. Ironically, some copies of that version were also recalled due to incorrect copy protection settings; they were exchanged for other copy-protected copies with the correct settings.[5]

[edit] Charts

Year Chart Position
2005 Billboard 200 #3
2005 Top Internet albums #1
2005 Top Christian albums #1

[edit] References

  1. ^ Artist Chart History - Switchfoot - Billboard (retrieved February 9, 2007)
  2. ^ Foreman, Tim (2005-09-14). ilikeswitchfoot.homestead.com. Retrieved on August 13, 2006.
  3. ^ "Artist Suggesting Ways Around Copy Protection", Slashdot, 2005-09-19. Retrieved on August 13, 2006.
  4. ^ Newman, Melinda. "Switchfoot switches plans, back in studio", Reuters, 2006-06-26. Retrieved on August 13, 2006.
  5. ^ Recall of Switchfoot, "Nothing is Sound," Discs - EMI (retrieved February 9, 2007)

[edit] External links


Switchfoot
Jon Foreman – Tim Foreman – Chad Butler – Jerome Fontamillas – Drew Shirley
Discography
Albums: The Legend of Chin – New Way to Be Human – Learning to Breathe – The Beautiful Letdown – Nothing Is Sound – Oh! Gravity.
Singles: Meant to Live – Dare You to Move – This Is Your Life – Stars – We Are One Tonight - Oh! Gravity. - Awakening
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