Glass Animals reach number one on Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Heat Waves’
It’s official: the new Glass Animals song, ‘Heat Waves’, has landed the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Released in 2020, the hit single has spent no less than 59 weeks on the chart, a record-breaking feat and one of the longest runs in chart history. Previously, the record was held by Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’.
‘Heat Waves’ has had a multi-format appeal. During its time in the charts, it has seen success on radio, streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify, and social media sites like TikTok. The track was reworked and re-released in March 2021, featuring a new verse by Iann Dior, which helped make ‘Heat Waves’ the song of the summer.
The following November, ‘Heat Waves’ reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, having spent a total of 42 weeks on the chart already. More recently, Glass Animals also became the first UK band to reach the top of Spotify’s global singles chart. So far, ‘Heat Waves’ has been streamed over 1.1 billion times on the streaming service.
‘Heat Waves’ also saw Glass Animals become the first UK band to reach the top of Spotify’s Global 50 Chart back in January. The single continues to garner over 4.26million streams a day on Spotify.
Opening up about the single’s dizzying success in a recent interview, frontman Dave Bayley explained how it perfectly captured the sense of elation people were feeling in that summer after the second lockdown. “It landed at the right time,” he began “I feel like everyone in the pandemic has been feeling nostalgic. No one was going out and creating new memories, they were all reliving the old ones. This song is about that – it’s about memories, it’s about missing someone, everyone’s been missing people in this age.”
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