Heartbeats

A cover that has almost completely eclipsed its source. The Knife's original is a euphoric, clattering synth-pop rush; González strips it to nylon-string guitar and a single close-miked voice, and in doing so finds the grief that was hiding inside the celebration. The guitar figure is relentless — a fast, circular fingerpicked pattern, more flamenco in its right-hand attack than folk, recorded so intimately you hear the strings squeak and the body of the instrument resonate. González, a Swedish-Argentine biochemist by training, sings almost without vibrato, flat and unemotive, which makes lines like "one night to be confused, one night to speed up truth" land like statements of fact rather than romance. The lyric describes a single night that reorganized a life, remembered from the far side. That restraint is the whole trick: the passion is entirely in the tempo of the hands while the voice refuses to raise itself. It reached most people through a Sony Bravia advertisement of bouncing colored balls, an unusually good marriage of image and sound, and it became shorthand for a whole strain of hushed 2000s acoustic minimalism. Best heard on headphones, walking, at dusk, thinking about someone you saw once and never properly again.