Glass Animals’ ‘Heat Waves’ Completes Slow Burn To No. 1
GLASS ANIMALS’ “HEAT WAVES”
hits No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, completing the longest climb to the summit in the history of the chart: 59 weeks.
The first Hot 100 chart-topper (and entry) for the British quartet — Dave Bayley, Edmund Irwin-Singer, Drew MacFarlane and Joe Seaward — debuted on the Jan. 16, 2021-dated list. Released in June 2020, the song topped Alternative Airplay for three weeks in March/ April 2021 and Mainstream Top 40 and Adult Top 40 for two weeks each this January and February. In between, it connected prominently on TikTok, which helped spark its crossover.
“The song is about nostalgia and the past and remembering and missing people,” Bayley says. “Through the last couple years, and still now, people have been missing their loved ones, and not everyone has been able to just go visit their parents or their best friend. It has been quite difficult ... that’s my hunch as to why people have gravitated toward this song.”
The track leads with 66.7 million radio airplay audience impressions, 14.8 million streams and 2,900 sold in the United States during the tracking week of Feb. 25 to March 3, according to MRC Data. It’s from Glass Animals’ album Dreamland, which debuted as their first Billboard 200 top 10 in August 2020.
“I almost feel like it gives us a little bit of breathing room,” says Bayley of the song’s success. “I think there’s often a lot of pressure to keep putting things out. But because this has kept going, it has given us the confidence to just keep doing what we were doing.”