Glass Animals had a huge hit with “Heat Waves”. What's next?

“Oh shit!” Dave Bailey exclaims. His blue eyes are wide as he holds his head in both hands. The Glass Animals frontman just heard some great news from his publicist, who confirms that the British band's hit song, “Heat Waves,” has officially been certified diamond by the RIAA, representing 10 million sales and streaming units. Bayley blinks rapidly and whispers in disbelief, trying to think of what to say to his Zoom next. Rolling rock. “I don't know what to do with it!” he adds.

Even as Glass Animals prepare to release their fourth studio album, I love you so much, the glorious mammoth that is “Heat Waves” is still front and center. For the past four years, the song has taken over the band's life. It was released as the first single from 2020 Dreamlandwas a sleeper hit, reaching Number One in Advertising sign Hot 100 almost two years after its release and breaking multiple registrations related to map longevity. The whirlwind that followed included TikTok virality (more than 1 million videos using the song) and a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist – even though Glass Animals make compelling songs that blend indie rock, hip-hop, pop and electronica from then their debut in 2014.

“Nothing was real,” Bayley says of her meteoric rise to a new level of fame. It didn't help that the pandemic was raging at the same time. “There's this huge level of detachment between reality and what's happening,” he says, adding, “I feel like I didn't get a chance to catch up.”

As the lockdowns lifted and the world returned to a new sense of normalcy, Bayley still felt overwhelmed. “I was forcing myself to anticipate what I thought should happen or what I thought someone should do in that situation,” she says. He jumped at the chance to work with new people in the recording studio, co-producing eight tracks for Florence and the Machine's 2022 album Dance feverwhose credits also include Jack Antonoff and Florence Welch herself.

But as an introvert who works best alone, none of the new material he was creating felt right for a Glass Animals record. “I was doing a lot of things I'd never done before and kind of lost my sense of who I was,” admits Bayley, who is the sole songwriter and producer on I love you so much.

The madness of that time is best summed up in the new track “What the Hell Is Happening?” In the song, Bayley falls into the trunk of a car, but the chorus goes “I'm so happy/This is exactly what I wanna be,” it almost sounds like he's trying to convince himself. All this is a strange transfer from the drawing. “There's a strange joy in that weakness,” Bayley says, before adding, “Your fate is not in your hands. You don't have to make decisions… There's freedom in that.”

Soon, Bayley says, he found himself in an existential crisis that almost swallowed him whole. During a violent storm in Los Angeles, trapped in a “bubble of helplessness,” he turned inward and began to think about the onslaught of emotions that gave way to I love you very much. In many ways, the album is Bayley's response to the past four years, as she deals with generational trauma, anxiety, abusive relationships, and loneliness—and how it all relates to Bayley's experiences. It's a move he pulled straight from his hit “Heat Waves,” which he describes as “the most personal song I've written so far on this album.”

To let his raw lyrics shine, the production leaves a lot more room to breathe than on previous records. In 2014 Zamba and of 2016 How to be Human, there was a lot more of what Bayley calls “ear candy” to be heard in every measure, whether it was the drop of water, the blow of the wind, or the beeps from video games. The change is intentional, says Bayley: “I've been trying to do some of the storytelling with the chords a little bit more, so there's a lot more chord work on these songs compared to previous records.”

I love you so much is a natural continuation of Dreamland with big, heavy basslines, catchier cues and bigger pop sounds. To create a cinematic, space-inspired sound, Bayley delved deep into the past. used the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and their work on old soundtracks such as 1981 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At one point in our conversation, Bayley is so excited about the technical equipment he's referring to, he holds up his laptop and shows me the instruments up close on Zoom. The different keyboards and mixing boards make Bayley's London studio look like a spaceship.

With such careful intent put on I love you so much, it's hard not to wonder what new audiences will make of Glass Animals' first full-length since their smash hit. “Obviously it would make me happy if the album was successful commercially,” says Bayley. “But for me, success is on a very personal level.”

This is something that is more difficult to define for the singer. Bayley sits with his thoughts for a second before asking me what I consider successful for an artist. I mean a band's ability to connect with listeners and stay authentic no matter what. He ruminates on the idea of ​​fellowship and says, “Maybe it's created in some shape or form, in the most powerful way.”

Once he hears about this new certification for their biggest hit, Bayley really finds his answer to what would make the new Glass Animals album a success in his mind. “With 'Heat Waves,' I was trying to do something honest and personal and push myself more than I had before,” he says. “Luckily, I think I've spent an entire album doing that.”