Who recorded it first
Heartbeats
Not a José González original — a 2002 The Knife single
Ask where “Heartbeats” comes from and most people will name José González, alone with a nylon-string guitar. The song was in fact written, produced and recorded by the Swedish electronic duo The Knife — siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer — and issued as a single in Sweden on 27 December 2002 on their own Rabid Records, with V2. González’s acoustic cover appeared on his 2003 debut album Veneer and went largely unremarked until a Sony Bravia television advert used it in November 2005. Reissued as a single on 9 January 2006, the cover reached No. 9 in the UK; The Knife’s original had reached No. 26 in Sweden and only No. 119 in Britain.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued as a single in Sweden on 27 December 2002 on Rabid Records — the label the Dreijer siblings ran themselves — with V2 also credited. MusicBrainz lists that Swedish release as Rabid catalogue RABID 013. The song then appeared on The Knife’s second album, Deep Cuts, released 17 January 2003, and the single was re-released on 4 October 2004.
Charted No. 26 in Sweden. In Britain it registered at No. 119 on the singles chart — outside the published Top 100, which is another way of saying almost nobody there heard it.
Hear The Knife’s original 2002 studio recording of “Heartbeats” www.youtube.com · An auto-generated “Provided to YouTube by Lucille AB” upload on The Knife’s Topic channel, with the description crediting ℗ Rabid Records and the album Deep Cuts. Its running time of 3:51 matches the MusicBrainz recording (231,800 ms) tied to the 27 December 2002 Swedish release, so this is the original take rather than a remix, a live version or a re-recording. Then compare José González’s solo acoustic reading from his 2003 debut “Veneer” — the hushed nylon-string version that turned The Knife’s synth-pop into a folk standard. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated upload on the “José González - Topic” channel; description reads “Provided to YouTube by Mute — Heartbeats · José González · Veneer”, ℗ 2003 Imperial Recordings under exclusive licence to Piecefrog Ltd. Runtime 162s against the MusicBrainz Veneer recording at 157–158s (2:38); the +4s is the trailing silence typical of Topic uploads, well inside tolerance.The paper trail
The single came out in Sweden on 27 December 2002 on Rabid Records, the label the Dreijer siblings ran themselves, and the song then anchored the album Deep Cuts on 17 January 2003. Deep Cuts on Wikipedia ↗
MusicBrainz ties the studio recording to that 27 December 2002 Swedish release and gives it a running time of 3:51 — the same take that sits on Deep Cuts. MusicBrainz recording ↗
The Official Charts Company records José González’s version entering the UK chart on 21 January 2006, peaking at No. 9 and staying 35 weeks — the hit that people now remember as the song itself. Official Charts ↗
The Knife took Sony’s money with open eyes: despite a pointedly anti-commercial stance, they said they needed the funds to establish a record company. The Knife ↗
MusicBrainz: the “Heartbeats” work and every recording of itKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
What the record actually shows
“Heartbeats” is one of the clearest cases of an advert rewriting a song’s authorship in public memory. The dates are not in dispute; they are simply not widely known.
José González wrote and first recorded it
His version is a cover. It was recorded for his 2003 debut album Veneer and released as a single only on 9 January 2006, after the Sony Bravia advert.
The Knife
Karin and Olof Dreijer released it as a single in Sweden on 27 December 2002 on Rabid Records and V2, and placed it on Deep Cuts in January 2003.
Karin Dreijer and Olof Dreijer
MusicBrainz credits both as composer and lyricist of the work, and they produced the original recording themselves — so here the writers and the first recording artist are the same people.
Sony’s Bravia “Balls” commercial
The November 2005 advert, not the song’s own release, is what moved the cover from unremarked album track to Top 10 single.
The Knife wrote it and recorded it first, in December 2002. José González covered it in 2003 and had the hit in 2006.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The interesting question is not who got it wrong but why the mistake is so complete. The Knife’s original had everything a hit needs except reach: No. 26 in Sweden, No. 119 in Britain. González’s cover, for its part, sat on a 2003 album doing very little until November 2005, when Sony bought thirty seconds of it.
The advert was Nicolai Fuglsig’s “Balls” for Sony Bravia — 250,000 coloured bouncy balls let loose down the hill at Filbert and Leavenworth in San Francisco, no computer graphics, and one acoustic guitar. It took a Gold Lion at Cannes in June 2006. What it also did was bind a single recording to an image so tightly that the recording became the song. There is a neat irony in the money: because the Dreijers wrote it, Sony’s licence fee went to The Knife — the act the advert was quietly erasing — and they took it, saying plainly that they needed it to run a label.
The full chronology
- 27 December 2002 — The Knife release “Heartbeats” as a single in Sweden on Rabid Records, with V2. It reaches No. 26 there.
- 17 January 2003 — the song appears on the duo’s second album, Deep Cuts.
- 29 October 2003 — José González includes a solo acoustic cover on his debut album Veneer. It is an album track, not a single.
- 4 October 2004 — The Knife’s single is re-released.
- November 2005 — Sony uses González’s recording in the Bravia “Balls” commercial, directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, in which 250,000 bouncing balls pour down Filbert and Leavenworth in San Francisco.
- 9 January 2006 — the cover is issued as a single in the UK on Peacefrog and Imperial. It enters the chart on 21 January, peaks at No. 9 and stays 35 weeks, going double platinum in the UK.
- The Knife’s own recording never got past No. 119 in Britain.
The advert did not make the song famous. It made one recording of it famous.