6 “Heat Glass Animals Waves”
GLASS ANIMALS’ “Heat Waves” continues its slow burn, returning to its Nos. 6 and 7 highs on the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global
Excl. U.S. charts, respectively.
Meanwhile, on the U.S.-based Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart, the song finally reaches No. 1 after its release in June 2020, first hitting an airplay chart that November and beginning a three-week stay atop Alternative Airplay in March 2021.
During its run, however, “Heat Waves” cooled at pop radio last summer. It originally hit a No. 16 high on Mainstream Top 40 last June before dropping off the chart in July (ironic given its lyrics about “late nights in the middle of June”). It didn’t return to the ranking until mid-November, and it reached the top 10 two weeks later.
As its top 40 radio play declined, “Heat Waves” surged on TikTok, playing off the song’s “all I think about is you” lyric from the hook. It trended very strongly in late summer, with the band posting a clip on the platform as well.
The song “always felt strong, but once it kicked in on TikTok and never [left] the top tier [in] streaming, radio seemed to realize that it deserved another shot, which is when it kicked into the next gear,” says Erik Bradley, assistant program director/music director at WBBM-FM (B96) Chicago. “It has always sounded like a massive hit, which is exactly what it wound up becoming.”
“My favorite earworm of the year,” adds Sue O’Neil, program director of WKSE (Kiss 98.5) Buffalo, N.Y. “I thought it was going to go away or maybe stay as a recurrent, but I loved when we started seeing research and were able to move it into a power rotation.”