It was released as the lead single from their debut studio album, Give Up, on January 21, 2003 through Sub Pop Records. Sub Pop offered a free download of the song on their official website, which had been downloaded over nine million times by August 2005. Iron & Wine's rendition of "Such Great Heights" aided in boosting the song's profile. For example, in Boston, local independent retailer Newbury Comics campaigned for the city's alternative station, WFNX, to put the song on the air.

In Chile, the song was featured Bank commercial of BCI in 2017. 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. He again played it on his Fall 2009 tour in Northampton Massachusetts, St. Louis, MO, Indiana University, and in May 2010 in San Francisco to close the show.

The original version was licensed for commercials for Target, Ask.com, UPS, and Kaiser Permanente. [25] In January 2004, influential Los Angeles alternative station KROQ-FM began playing "Such Great Heights",[26] which bolstered the album's popularity. • Ben Folds covered "Such Great Heights" on Australian radio station Triple J using a piano, forks, tin foil, and glass. An 18 second sample of the song's chorus. [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.

"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.

[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]. [24] Two of the first stations to broadcast the tune were KCRW in Los Angeles and KITS in San Francisco.

Despite this, "Such Great Heights" continued to sell. The Postal Service - "Such Great Heights", Grey's Anatomy Original Soundtrack Volume 1, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Recording Industry Association of America, "Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard Deconstructs the Science of Songwriting", "allmusic ((( Such Great Heights > Overview )))", "The Postal Service: Such Great Heights & The District Sleeps Alone Tonight EPs: Pitchfork Review", Apple Ad vs The Postal Service "Such Great Heights" video, "2005-10-02 Cornell University Ithaca, NY", "Such Great Heights video from Joy Kills Sorrow", "Such Great Heights - Jackson 5 - Style The Postal Service Cover ft. Kiah Victoria", "The Postal Service's Single Pushes Them to 'Such Great Heights, "Relationship Of Mutual Respect Reaps Rewards", "The Postal Service's 'Give Up': An oral history of the indie side project that became an aughties touchstone -- and a platinum seller", https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-RandR/2000s/2004/RR-2004-04-30.pdf, https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-RandR/2000s/2005/RR-2005-04-22.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Such_Great_Heights&oldid=982786763, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox song with unknown parameters, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2020, Articles needing additional references from March 2020, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 10 October 2020, at 10:15.

[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. It did feel that there was some sort of spiritual transcendence happening and the song being beamed down to me.

[23], The success of "Such Great Heights" was a grassroots approach.

"[citation needed], 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 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. [3] It debuted before the album's release as a physical CD single on January 21, 2003. 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. [1][2], "Such Great Heights" came together late in the recording process, and was one of the last songs the duo completed in June of 2002. The single for "Such Great Heights" was the first CD released by The Postal Service, featuring cover artwork designed by Kozyndan. [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. [3] Its genesis came together "incredibly quickly," according to Gibbard, who felt it "seemingly came out of nowhere.

"Such Great Heights" is a song by American indie pop band The Postal Service. He also played the song live during his Fall 2006 tour, including once in his MySpace webcast on October 24, 2006, and on his Summer 2007 tour. 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. For most of the song, the two workers are primarily shown, interspersed with shots of the machinery working on silicon wafers.

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." [12], "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. [21] It rose to its peak position of number 21 the following week, and slowly fell after that. 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 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. 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. The release of the single served as a preview for the band's album, Give Up, which was released a month later. 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. [22] In total, the song spent eleven weeks on the chart. The song was written by Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello, and recorded in early 2002.

Josh & Xander later created a commercial for Apple Computer Inc. (now Apple Inc.) and Intel using similar footage. 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. "[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].