Glass Animals have become the first UK band to reach the top of Spotify‘s global singles chart. The Oxford-based indie rock/pop band have hit the highest of heights yet through the continued success of their 2020 single “Heat Waves”, which originally featured on their third studio album Dreamland.
The upbeat, summery song which combines dreamy vocals with glossy production has now been streamed more than 1.1billion times on Spotify and has hit the top of Spotify’s Global Top 50 Chart, making Glass Animals the first British band ever to reach the top spot.
‘“Heat Waves”, which is solely credited to Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley, is currently amassing over 4.26million streams a day on Spotify. It is also the first Spotify chart-topping song since Pharrell’s 2014 single “Happy” to be solely credited to a single writer. Bayley in fact wrote and produced all three of the band’s albums to date.
The song has also been nominated for a BRIT Award for ‘Song Of The Year’, while Glass Animals are up for both Best Band In The World and Best Band From The UK: Supported by Pizza Express at the BandLab NME Awards 2022.
“Heat Waves”, was re-released in March 2021 which featured a new verse by Iann Dior, and helped Glass Animals to achieve US chart history back in November. The song reached number 10 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 for the first time that month, having already spent 42 weeks on the chart.
It was the longest climb to the top 10 in US chart history: beating previous American Idol winner Carrie Underwood, whose single “Before He Cheats” released in 2006 took 38 weeks to reach the same position.
Glass Animals have been going strong for more than 10 years now having released their debut EP in 2012. After touring heavily across the UK, the US and Europe they had their first major success with their second album How to Be a Human Being in 2016, which reached the US Top 20 and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. This was then followed by their aforementioned third album Dreamland, which was recorded after drummer Joe Seaward recovered from a serious cycling accident, reaching No 2 in the UK and No 7 in the US.
