Die-hard moviegoers who insist on sitting through the credits to the bitter end often get rewarded for their tenacity with added film snippets and music that more impatient fans miss. Such is the case in the film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Three songs into the final credits, fans get to hear Switchfoot’s “This Is Home.” The track and its accompanying video are also featured on the Prince Caspian Original Soundtrack Enhanced CD.
Landing a cut on the soundtrack of a major motion picture is a coup for any artist, and Switchfoot owes much of its success to the general market awareness created by the band’s inclusion on the Walk To Remember soundtrack. But according to Chad Butler, the band’s drummer, the opportunity to be a part of the C.S. Lewis legacy raised that opportunity to an entirely different level, personally if not professionally.
“Having a piece of music set to another art form is a huge honor,” Butler says. “To have a director believe that your song will improve their art is amazing. I was pretty much raised on The Chronicles of Narnia. My parents were huge C.S. Lewis fans, as were Jon [Foreman, guitar/vocals] and Tim’s [Foreman, bass]. I think we know his books better than any other author. I had just started reading the Chronicles to my kids when the creators of the film contacted us and wanted us to write a song specifically for Prince Caspian. It was an exciting process for my kids when we started working on the song.”
Butler, who first discovered Lewis when he read Mere Christianity as a 16-year-old boy, says it’s not only the recurring theme of human beings yearning for something grander that appeals so strongly to the band, but the way Lewis expresses himself.
“It’s his mastery of the English language that excites me,” Butler muses. “He is a wordsmith. But more than that, it is his thought process regarding faith and [the] everyman that is so intriguing. He doesn’t come across as ‘churched’ but as someone I would want to sit down at a pub with and talk about God in a casual setting. He was really passionate about God in everyday life. That excites me, and it is that perspective which permeates our approach to life and art as a band.”
Switchfoot is the only Christian artist on the motion picture soundtrack, a fact that has raised a few eyebrows after the huge interest displayed by the Christian music community surrounding the 2005 release of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Although the movie soundtrack for that film did not include any Christian artists, its companion “Inspired By” CD featured a veritable who’s who in the industry, with songs by Jeremy Camp, Jars of Clay, Chris Tomlin, Rebecca St. James, Nichole Nordeman and others.