Enough To Let Me Go

Album: Hello Hurricane (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • Lead singer Jon Foreman told New Release Tuesday about this song: "This one started with the guitar hook I came up with during sound-check; however, most of the song took shape in a hotel room in Australia. I was thinking about how love (not just lust or co-dependency that commonly flood the tunes on the airways) actually involves quite a bit of faith. There's a lot of letting go involved. Two souls in love is an intricate dance of give and take. I can be a fairly solitary person from time to time. Sure, I love being with people, but I also need time alone. I guess I thrive on the poles. So this song is about the dance involved in a relationship the coming together and letting go. The song equates love with breathing- pulling in and releasing. Or a seed, for the seed to grow it has to be dropped and buried.

    In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial driven culture we can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. "Perhaps if I found the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair." But of course no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that role. But the silence can be deafening. It's a fearful thing to be alone. Do you love me enough to let me go? "I can't live without you" - "I would die if you ever left me" - These are not the songs of love, these are the songs of consumption."
  • Speaking to NewReleaseToday in a 2019 interview, guitarist Drew Shirley said this is a favorite Switchfoot song for him as it reminds him you can't control other people but instead have to work on who you are.

    "You have to be responsible for yourself and your decisions while loving the people around you," he explained. "You have to let go of control over a certain part of things and realize that what someone else does or doesn't do is not your burden to carry, even your kids. In a way, you can't control them. You raise them, you do your absolute best, you do what you're supposed to do. At a certain level, you have to love them enough to let them go. I think that's a powerful statement for my life."

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