The Beautiful Letdown
by Switchfoot

The Beautiful Letdown by Switchfoot
Year: 2003
Release date: 2003-02-25
Overall rank: 5,416th   Overall chart history
Average Rating: 
67/100 (from 150 votes)
  Ratings distribution   Average rating history
Accolades:
Award Top albums of 2003 (107th)
Award Top albums of of the 2000s (936th)
Award Best albums of all time (5,416th)

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Switchfoot bestography

The Beautiful Letdown is ranked as the best album by Switchfoot.

Switchfoot album bestography « Higher ranked
-
This album (5,416th)
The Beautiful Letdown
Lower ranked (9,148th) »
Nothing Is Sound

(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).

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The Beautiful Letdown track list

  Track ratings The tracks on this album have an average rating of 80 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).

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Track pick (1000 - 100 votes) Top-rated track as rated by BestEverAlbums.com members.

The Beautiful Letdown rankings

The Beautiful Letdown rankings summary
Overall rank: 5,416th | 2000s rank: 936th | 2003 rank: 107th  Overall chart history
(Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings). (Last updated: 7 hours ago).

The Beautiful Letdown collection

The Beautiful Letdown ratings

Average Rating: 
67/100 (from 150 votes)
  Ratings distribution Help Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.

Showing latest 5 ratings for this album.  | Show all 150 ratings for this album.

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RatingDate updatedMemberAlbum ratingsAvg. album rating
 
70/100
 !
06/01/2026 09:22 Exist-en-ciel  Ratings distribution  15,11270/100
 
90/100
 !
02/22/2026 13:17 Milhaud  Ratings distribution  2,10071/100
 
70/100
 !
12/05/2024 01:13 slatsheit  Ratings distribution  2,04281/100
 
95/100
 !
07/15/2024 11:53 jack1992  Ratings distribution  34252/100
 
85/100
 !
06/29/2024 22:51 Svelte8  Ratings distribution  1,85973/100

Rating metrics: Help Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)

This album has a Bayesian average rating of 67.5/100, a mean average of 67.2/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 67.2/100. The standard deviation for this album is 23.4.


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The Beautiful Letdown comments

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From 01/11/2025 02:22 | #306909
The greatest christian rock album of all time.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
40/100
From 02/17/2022 17:01 | #281459
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Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | -3 votes (0 helpful | 3 unhelpful)
Rating:  
95/100
This album still holds up after all these years.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +4 votes (4 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
This album surrounded me growing up and still almost does, despite me rarely making a conscience effort to listen to it. The impact that The Beautiful Letdown had in Christian culture was almost comparable to the impact the Nevermind had in mainstream culture. All of my friends and I knew every single. We heard them at school and on every Christian radio station for years. The songs were in every Christian movie ever made and the album was almost impossible to find in the Christian book stores. This album made such a huge impact on me and all my friends. We grew up with it whether we knew it or not. We still know all the lyrics and all the songs. The popularity has died down recently (It only took about ten years), but it is still the greatest Christian rock album ever recorded and it will forever set the standards for the future of Christian rock. The only album that comes close is By God by Disciple, but The Beautiful Letdown is miles ahead of anything to ever be released in terms of impact, legacy, and quality.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +4 votes (4 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
One of - if not the best - Christian music albums of all time. Its legacy lives on.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
From 06/21/2015 00:05 | #144294
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Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | -6 votes (0 helpful | 6 unhelpful)
Rating:  
40/100
From 12/11/2014 02:39 | #129177
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Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | -4 votes (1 helpful | 5 unhelpful)
From 10/18/2012 01:11 | #52596
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Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | -5 votes (0 helpful | 5 unhelpful)
Rating:  
90/100
From 09/22/2012 18:50 | #50966
best lyrics ive ever heard on this album
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (2 helpful | 1 unhelpful)
From 10/17/2011 21:45 | #28600
I have completely forgotten what this one sounds like. I have some songs rated really highly though with some in the middle. Not going to listen again right now though
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)

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