Band breaks records with “Heat Waves”
The critically acclaimed, record breaking BRIT and GRAMMY Award-nominated global sensations Glass Animals releases “I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)” with acclaimed songwriter and artist Albert Hammond Jr.. The original version, released last year, is the first new music from the British four-piece since the colossal global impact of “Heat Waves.” The official video, directed by Drew Kirsch (Taylor Swift, Shakira), captures the power of dance in the post-lockdown world, and now guitarist of legendary rock band The Strokes, Hammond Jr., puts his own spin on the song, written by Dave Bayley about letting off steam after being in a pressure cooker for two years.
The Oxford band has since become global hitmakers and record breakers, with “Heat Waves” peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart for five weeks, the longest-leading No. 1 song by a British group in over 25 years, since Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” in 1997 – and its reign is now among the top 10 longest ever for No. 1 songs by British groups, including The Beatles. Producer and frontman Dave Bayley also joined Denzel Curry on stage at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend for a surprise performance of “Tokyo Drifting,” and becomes the producer of the moment, co-writing, producing, and remixing Florence + The Machine’s latest single “My Love,” described as “Nick Cave at the Club.”
The past year has seen Glass Animals go from cult-British indie band to the biggest band in the world, as their smash “Heat Waves” continues to break records. It climbed to No. 1 on the Top 40 radio chart, a first for the band and a historic 81 weeks after the song was released in 2020. The 11-month, one-week span between the song’s debut on the chart and its reign marks the longest for a No. 1 in the chart’s nearly 30-year history. Impressively, “Heat Waves” — solely written and produced by Dave Bayley — is the first No. 1 on the chart written by one writer since Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” in 2018 and first No. 1 written, produced, and performed by one artist since Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” in 2014.
“Heat Waves” broke the record for the longest climb to the Top 5 in Billboard Hot 100 history at 51 weeks. It also has set a new record for the most weeks at No. 1 for a song by a group on the Billboard 200 Global Chart, leading for six weeks in a row. In addition, the song peaked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Radio Songs Chart for four weeks in a row. “Heat Waves” is taken from their critically revered album Dreamland, which now has over 4.5 billion global streams, and has been on Spotify’s Global Weekly Chart for 67 weeks straight.
