It was back in January 2021 that Dave Bayley of Glass Animals enjoyed his first victory lap for the band’s global breakout hit “Heat Waves,” when the song topped Australia’s prestigious Triple J Hottest 100 radio countdown for 2020, as most of the world was still at the height of the first wave of pandemic-induced lockdown.
“That social media response of people reacting to it being announced as No. 1 on the Triple J Hottest 100 was — because we’d been locked down so long — the first time we’d seen people dance to the song, react to it,” Bayley recalls. “It was insane.”
A solid 14 months later, with the world (maybe) on the brink of fully reopening, “Heat Waves” is still adding No. 1s to its resume — with perhaps the biggest one of all coming this week in the form of a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1. The song took a record-breaking 59 weeks to complete its journey to the chart’s apex, debuting on the Hot 100 chart dated Jan. 16, 2021 — just a few days before the Hottest 100 victory — and finally replacing Encanto soundtrack smash “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” atop the listing this week (chart dated Mar. 12). It outpaces the previous longest trek to No. 1 (held by Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”) by a full 24 weeks — a sign of how much the charts have slowed down in recent years, as major releases have come sparingly and listeners are gravitating towards the familiar.
“I think people do like a bit of familiarity when there’s a bit of like, discomfort in the world,” Bayley says of the song’s success. “And I think maybe with [‘Heat Waves’] — the song is about nostalgia and the past, and remembering people and missing people. And I think through the last couple years, and still now, people have been missing their loved ones. And not everyone’s been able to just go visit their parents, or visit their best friend. It’s been quite difficult to do that… that’s my hunch as to why people have gravitated towards this song a little bit.”
Below, Bayley talks to Billboard from Portland, Oregon — the latest stop on the U.K. band’s current North American tour — about the song’s historic journey to the top, as well as his band’s half-undressed reaction to the news of their accomplishment, and his feelings about the Disney smash that “Heat Waves” just deposed.
Have you been following the song’s journey over the past year-plus up the Hot 100?
Uh, yes. [Laughs.] Yeah. In the same way that you, like, follow your child’s life through school — you’re always seeing what it’s doing, seeing what it’s up to, making sure it’s making friends… keeping tabs on it in the same way.
The song had such an incremental journey. Did you ever get to a point where you were like, “OK, well, we’ve gotten this far, that’s great, but now it’s probably gonna start to wind down from here,” or did you always hold out hope that it was gonna climb all the way to No. 1?
I never knew what to expect. Even before the song came out, I thought, “This is gonna be a tricky ride.” The song was gonna come out, and we had the date penciled — and then the pandemic hit. And really, from the beginning, I didn’t think the song was gonna… I dunno, I just didn’t think there was that much space for new music in that climate.
I remember, beginning of the climate, everyone was listening to old records. Everyone was listening to stuff they grew up with. People were listening to, like, Bruce Springsteen, and people were listening to The Beatles, and Etta James, and these kind of comfort songs, y’know? And I was like, “New music does not fit in in this situation.” But we’d promised people new music, and we had to put it out eventually. So we pushed the release date back months – as late as we could – put it out, and I just never expected it to keep climbing the way that it has.
Obviously this isn’t the first No. 1 for the song – you’ve been topping charts with it going back to 2020. When the song first topped the Triple J Hottest 100 countdown, how does that moment compare to this one? Does one feel more meaningful, or more surprising?
To be honest, they’re both very different to me. ‘Coz I feel like the world changed so much between those two moments. The Triple J Hottest 100 happened when we’d been pretty much locked down solidly in England for… so long at that point. And Australia hadn’t been. So that happened, and when people listened to that Hottest 100 countdown on the radio, they’re all filming themselves out in the beach with portable speakers and things like that, waiting for this countdown, waiting for this No. 1.
And this is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. This is like… my mum knows what this is. And I’m getting phone calls from people I haven’t spoken to in years. And other artists, my favorite artists in the world, people I’ve like looked up to for decades, are sending messages in. And it’s just – [laughs] – it’s different. But both beautiful.
Do you have any particular plans yourself or with the rest of the band to celebrate this? Have you done so already?
Well, I actually – we all found out today first… like, I woke up because, we were all in the bus, and our bass player [Edmund Irwin-Singer] has the bunk above me. And he just – he shouted, “F–KING NO. 1!!” And that’s what woke me up in the morning. I was in my underwear, he was in his underwear. I was so scared, because he was shouting, I thought something had gone wrong. And so I jumped out of bed, and was like, “Are you OK?” He like, crawled out of his bed, and we were in our underpants, and we gave each other a hug. And we couldn’t believe it. That was how we celebrated. And then we woke up the whole bus, and everyone had a bit of a hug in our pajamas.
And then we [arrived] in Portland as it was happening. Pulled up, and I went to my favorite deli, [which] is here. So I went there for lunch, and it was absolutely delicious. And I got a bagel, and it was awesome. It was the best bagel I ever had in my life.
When was it clear to you that this was going to be that song that takes the band to a new level, in terms of the response to it?
I mean, there’ve been a lot of little moments along the way that have kind of pointed it in that direction. I think the first thing that happened was – we released this song, we released the [Dreamland] album, and there was just so much amazing artwork coming back from fans, and coming back from the internet, coming back from the world. And there was so much of it, we decided to kind of like, try and fuel it. So we put all the stems for the song for free on our website, and we put all the pieces of the artwork – like Photoshop files and things – on the website for people to kinda keep creating with it.
People were writing stories based on the song, people were making entire cities in Minecraft based on the song, people were making soccer memes to the song. Like, every facet. Remixes were coming out left, right and center. Someone made a rug based on this song. It was mad. A Pez dispenser, shoes, anything, everything, coming back about this song. And I was like, “There’s something in this. There’s something about the way that people are hearing this and seem inclined to create something.”
And that’s the most incredible thing. That’s, like, the highest praise, as someone who’s written something, that you can possibly ask for — for someone to create something back.
A song like this puts you on the radar of a lot of people for the first time — even though Glass Animals has been around for several years and released several albums and had a pretty impressive amount of success already. Does having a song that’s this popular almost kind of reboot your career — like you’re starting over again in some ways?
Uh. That’s an interesting question. No. I don’t feel like we’re starting over again. [Laughs.] Sorry. It feels like we’re kind of still doing the thing that we set out to do, and we’re gonna keep doing that. We set out to make music that we loved and found interesting, and do cool things. Take risks in music and kinda create a world. And I guess this feels part of it, and it’s only gonna hopefully allow us to do more of that kind of stuff, which is so exciting. I can’t wait.
This album came out in the pandemic, as we’ve said many times, but it meant we didn’t really have a chance to have – normally I love doing experiences around albums. And kinda building a universe. We could only really do that on the internet [with this one]. So we’ve still got all of that to do with this album. There are other songs to breathe life into on this record. And possible new bits coming as part of the record that I can’t really tell you about, but I’m excited about. Hopefully this is just gonna allow us to keep building that universe.
Does it get tricky with a song that’s this popular for so long? You talk about all the plans you have – but do you not want to jump in too soon because this song is still going?
I mean, I almost feel like it give us a little bit of breathing room. I think there’s often a lot of pressure to keep putting things out – but because this has kept going, I’ve kind of had a chance to sit back and think about what I want to do next.
You know, we never expected this, we never intended for this. It’s kinda given us the confidence to just keep doing what we were doing, and be comfortable with that. Rather than try and do the same thing again, and chase… you’re never gonna repeat [that sort of success]. You’re gonna try and point in a slightly different direction, and take a different risk with the next one. That’s all you can do. If you keep trying to chase the dragon, you’re gonna fail.
Do you think this is the kind of song that serves as a perennial for you guys – one of those songs that, 20 years from now, when the weather starts to get a little warmer, people turn to “Heat Waves” again and again?
Maybe! Yeah, maybe, late nights in the middle of June, people will be switching it on. I definitely noticed in the middle of [last] June, the number of Instagram captions that had that lyric in was quite overwhelming. It could be one of those.
Has the meaning or the feeling of the song changed for you over the last year and a half? Are you getting new meaning, or a new sort of emotional reaction to it now?
Definitely. It’s probably the most personal song I’ve ever written… a very sad song, about missing somebody and not being able to do anything about it. And it’s a really tough song to sing live, because it brings a lot back, it brings back a huge amount of memories. And I think the person that it’s about would’ve been very, very happy seeing the song do what it’s done. And that makes me feel so much better about it. The person was always like my biggest champion, and I’m sure he’s like, looking down and he’s freakin’ happy as Larry about it. And now all I think about when I perform is that, and it makes me smile, you know?
And if you ever get overwhelmed performing it now, you can just kind of hold the microphone up to the crowd, and I think they’ll probably take care of it for you.
Absolutely! And that has happened! That happened the whole of the first American tour that we did when we came back… I was just overwhelmed. I remember playing in New York, and by the end of the song, I was bawling my eyes out. And I did exactly that [with the microphone]. And to be honest, it made me bawl my eyes out even harder! But it was beautiful.
Last question – the song that you guys knocked out from No. 1 was “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” from Encanto. Are you familiar with that song? Any, like, nieces and nephews that are in love with that movie?
I love the movie! It’s a great movie! Lin-Manuel Miranda is brilliant, and I’m a big fan of the film, a big fan of the song… the music in that movie in general is brilliant. But, uh, sorry Lin-Manuel Miranda…
