Glass Animals reached No. 1 with ‘Heat Waves’ in September after 60 weeks on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs.
For a band from England, Glass Animals, Variety’s Group of the Year, has spent so much time touring the United States, it may as well be American. “I feel comfortable here, and I get to eat all the food I grew up with, like Hot Pockets,” says Dave Bayley, the quartet’s ringleader and songwriter-producer, on a Zoom call during a break between two sold-out shows in Santa Barbara in late October. Bayley did grow up in America, partly in Texas, where he says he was “very much exposed to U.S. culture,” including a hip-hop radio station that he loved as a preteen. But it’s not Bayley’s upbringing in the Lone Star State that has endeared American fans to Glass Animals. It’s the band’s music, and their numerous tours in the past decade that set the stage for the hit, “Heat Waves,” which peaked at No.3 on Spotify’s Global Chart (with 4.5 million daily streams). “It was pretty relentless,” Bayley says of Glass Animals’ touring of the States in support of its first two albums.
