Format CD Label Sub Pop | Length 4:26 | |
B-side "There's Never Enough Time" Released January 21, 2003 (2003-01-21) Genre Indietronica
indie pop
electropop | ||
"Such Great Heights" is a song by American indie pop band The Postal Service. It was released as the lead single from their debut studio album, Give Up, on January 21, 2003 through Sub Pop Records. The single includes a previously unreleased track, "There's Never Enough Time", and two cover tracks by The Shins and Iron & Wine of "We Will Become Silhouettes" and "Such Great Heights", respectively.
Contents
The song was featured on a 2004 episode of Veronica Mars, and has also been used in several television commercials for organizations such as Ask.com, Kaiser Permanente, Target, UPS, M&M's, and Telstra. The song was also featured in the trailer for the 2004 film Garden State and the Iron & Wine cover version was featured in the film and its soundtrack. An instrumental version of the song was featured as part of UPS's "Whiteboard" ad campaign, which was launched 6 January 2007, almost four years after the song was officially released. The song was the original theme song to Grey's Anatomy, and appears on its season one soundtrack, Grey's Anatomy Original Soundtrack Volume 1.
"Such Great Heights" ranked 27 on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Songs of the Decade list, and was consistently ranked in the weekly top 5 most frequently played tracks on social music site Last.fm for almost two years during 2005 and 2006.
Background
The song was written by Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello, and recorded in early 2002. The final recordings include backing vocals in the studio recording by Jen Wood, whose other collaborations include work for The Black Heart Procession and Joan of Arc. The single for "Such Great Heights" was the first CD released by The Postal Service, featuring cover artwork designed by Kozyndan. The release of the single served as a preview for the band's album, Give Up, which was released a month later.
Music video
The music video for "Such Great Heights" was directed by Josh & Xander, and premiered in April 2003.
Set in the clean room of a semiconductor fabrication plant, where, as the machinery assembles devices, two workers in bunny suits cast longing glances at each other. For most of the song, we primarily see the two workers, interspersed with shots of the machinery working on silicon wafers. When the bridge comes, the video leaves the two workers as one is carefully taking a wafer from the other, and dives into a sequence of shots of machines assembling wafers; then zooms in on a bank of chips; then zooms out to show the chips are inside of a satellite; then zooms in on the Earth and down to the city block containing EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City, however the block has been replaced with a computer circuit; from there, a match cut is made to a monitor in the factory displaying a similar looking computer chip; and this is the end of the sequence, cutting back to the two workers handing over the wafer.
The video was filmed inside a real fabrication plant run by Skyworks Solutions When the video premiered on iTunes, the Skyworks Solutions name and logo were blurred out during some scenes.
Josh & Xander later created a commercial for Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) and Intel using similar footage. While strikingly similar to the music video, the commercial did not contain imagery of The Postal Service or a recording of its music. On January 19, 2006, Ben Gibbard stated on the band's website, "It has recently come to our attention that Apple Computers' new television commercial for the Intel chip features a shot-for-shot recreation of our video for 'Such Great Heights' made by the same filmmakers responsible for the original." In response, the band came out with the following statement: "We did not approve this commercialization and are extremely disappointed with both parties that this was executed without our consultation or consent."
Track listing
- "Such Great Heights" – 4:27
- "There's Never Enough Time" – 3:33
- "We Will Become Silhouettes" (cover by The Shins) – 3:01
- "Such Great Heights" (cover by Iron & Wine) – 4:10