Such Great Heights

"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.

"Such Great Heights"
Single by The Postal Service
from the album Give Up
B-side"There's Never Enough Time"
ReleasedJanuary 21, 2003 (2003-01-21)
Recorded2002
Genre
Length4:26
LabelSub Pop
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)The Postal Service
The Postal Service singles chronology
"Such Great Heights"
(2003)		 "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"
(2003)

"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.[1][2]

Background

"Such Great Heights" came together late in the recording process, and was one of the last songs the duo completed in June 2002.[3] Its genesis came together "incredibly quickly," according to Gibbard, who felt it "seemingly came out of nowhere. It did feel that there was some sort of spiritual transcendence happening and the song being beamed down to me."[4] For Gibbard, the song was a thematic departure from his more melancholy subject matter: "I think 'Such Great Heights' is the first time I've ever written a positive love song," he told Rolling Stone, "where it's a song about being in love and how it's rad, rather than having your heart broken."[5]

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
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[6]
*Pitchfork Media(6.3/10)[7]

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, the two workers are primarily shown, 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 (now the Vivint Smart Home 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[8] 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.[9][10] 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 issued 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
  1. "Such Great Heights" – 4:27
  2. "There's Never Enough Time" – 3:33
  3. "We Will Become Silhouettes" (cover by The Shins) – 3:01
  4. "Such Great Heights" (cover by Iron & Wine) – 4:10

Uses in media

The song was featured on a 2004 episode of Veronica Mars and an episode of VH1’s Bands Reunited, 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.[11] 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. In Chile, the song was featured Bank commercial of BCI in 2017.[12]

Cover versions

Commercial performance

"Such Great Heights" was the band's first single; both Gibbard and Tamborello both jokingly referred to it as "the hit" of the album, presaging its eventual popularity.[3] It debuted before the album's release as a physical CD single on January 21, 2003. The duo had hoped to offer more to listeners than a typical A/B-side release, and Sub Pop labelmates the Shins and Iron & Wine agreed to cover two of the group's songs. Iron & Wine's rendition of "Such Great Heights" aided in boosting the song's profile. Both versions were simultaneously popular, with Iron & Wine's version were both in the film and soundtrack for Garden State, as well as in television advertisement for M&M's. The original version was licensed for commercials for Target, Ask.com, UPS, and Kaiser Permanente.[20]

It debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles Sales chart, a ranking which only tallied physical sales, at number 30 on February 8, 2003.[21] It rose to its peak position of number 21 the following week, and slowly fell after that.[22] In total, the song spent eleven weeks on the chart.[23]

The success of "Such Great Heights" was a grassroots approach. For example, in Boston, local independent retailer Newbury Comics campaigned for the city's alternative station, WFNX, to put the song on the air.[24] Two of the first stations to broadcast the tune were KCRW in Los Angeles and KITS in San Francisco.[25] In January 2004, influential Los Angeles alternative station KROQ-FM began playing "Such Great Heights",[26] which bolstered the album's popularity. Sub Pop offered a free download of the song on their official website, which had been downloaded over nine million times by August 2005.[27] Sub Pop A&R director Tony Kiewel was told by executives that the song had high "burn factor"—radio terminology for a song that listeners might quickly grow tired of.[28]

Despite this, "Such Great Heights" continued to sell. The single had sold over 25,000 copies by August 2004,[25] and was later certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling over 500,000 copies, in June 2005.[29] The grassroots approach was also apparent in radio airplay; while it originally peaked at #44 on the Radio and Records Alternative chart[30] in 2004, its airplay was so persistent that it managed to break into the chart again in 2005, peaking that time at #50.[31]

Charts
Chart (2003) Peak
position
US Hot 100 Singles Sales (Billboard)[22] 21
Chart (2004) Peak
position
US Radio and Records Alternative[30] 44
Chart (2005) Peak
position
US Radio and Records Alternative[31] 50

References
  1. "100 Best Songs of the 2000s". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  2. "Top Track Charts –". Last.fm. 2008-11-21. Archived from the original on 2010-04-27. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  3. Scharpling, Tom (director); Gibbard, Ben (interview); Tamborello, Jimmy (interview) (April 9, 2013). The Postal Service: In Their Own Words. Retrieved October 19, 2019.
  4. McCartney, Kelly (April 19, 2015). "Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard Deconstructs the Science of Songwriting". Medium. Cuepoint. Retrieved October 19, 2019.
  5. Flicker, Jonah (May 7, 2012). "Such Great Heights". Rolling Stone. Retrieved October 19, 2019.
  6. "allmusic ((( Such Great Heights > Overview )))". Allmusic. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  7. "The Postal Service: Such Great Heights & The District Sleeps Alone Tonight EPs: Pitchfork Review". Web.archive.org. 2003-08-07. Archived from the original on 2006-04-11. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  8. "Fab Video". Skyworks Solutions, Inc. Archived from the original on 2005-03-01. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  9. "Apple - Intel Chip Switch". YouTube. 2008-01-04. Archived from the original on November 23, 2011. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
  10. Apple Ad vs The Postal Service "Such Great Heights" video
  11. "Whiteboard Advertising Campaign". United Parcel Service. 2007. Archived from the original on 2007-02-27. Retrieved 2007-01-06.
  13. "2005-10-02 Cornell University Ithaca, NY". prettytheworld.com. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  14. Such Great Heights Archived 2011-09-24 at the Wayback Machine on Bandcamp, accessed 2011-12-05.
  15. Rydin, Brent (August 15, 2011), Amanda Palmer and Kim Boekbinder Hit "Such Great Heights", Cover Me.
  16. Barnes, Amelia (August 24, 2011), Kim Boekbinder & Amanda Palmer - Such Great Heights (2011 Single), The AU Review, retrieved 2011-12-05.
  17. "My Space". 2007-08-21. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
  18. Lawless, John (2013-08-16). "Such Great Heights video from Joy Kills Sorrow". Bluegrass Today. Retrieved 2017-01-22.
  19. "Such Great Heights - Jackson 5 - Style The Postal Service Cover ft. Kiah Victoria". Retrieved 2016-02-19.
  20. Wawzenek, Bryan (January 19, 2018). "The Postal Service's Single Pushes Them to 'Such Great Heights'". Diffuser.fm.
  21. "Hot 100 Singles Sales" (PDF). Billboard. 115 (5). Nielsen Business Media, Inc. February 8, 2003. p. 62. ISSN 0006-2510.
  22. "Hot 100 Singles Sales" (PDF). Billboard. 115 (6). Nielsen Business Media, Inc. February 15, 2003. p. 56. ISSN 0006-2510.
  23. "Hot 100 Singles Sales" (PDF). Billboard. 115 (18). Nielsen Business Media, Inc. May 5, 2003. p. 72. ISSN 0006-2510.
  24. Traiman, Steve (September 27, 2003). "Relationship Of Mutual Respect Reaps Rewards" (PDF). Billboard. 115 (32). Nielsen Business Media, Inc. p. N–1–N–8. ISSN 0006-2510.
  25. Paoletta, Michael (August 7, 2004). "Postal Service Delivers Give Up". Billboard. 116 (32). Nielsen Business Media, Inc. p. 34. ISSN 0006-2510.
  26. "POSTAL SERVICE ADDED on KROQ!". SubPop.com. January 13, 2004. Archived from the original on April 14, 2004.
  27. Martens, Todd (August 20, 2005). "Q&A: Jonathan Poneman". Billboard. 117 (34). Nielsen Business Media, Inc. p. 18. ISSN 0006-2510.
  28. Andesron, Kyle (April 19, 2013). "The Postal Service's 'Give Up': An oral history of the indie side project that became an aughties touchstone -- and a platinum seller". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved October 19, 2019.
  29. "Gold & Platinum – RIAA". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  30. https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-RandR/2000s/2004/RR-2004-04-30.pdf
  31. https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-RandR/2000s/2005/RR-2005-04-22.pdf
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