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Heat Waves
"Heat Waves" is a song by British indie rock band Glass Animals released as a single from their third studio album Dreamland on 29 June 2020.
After initially gaining little attention, the song went on to be the band's signature song and biggest hit single to date. In addition to reaching number five on the UK Singles Chart and being a top-five hit in several other European countries, it reached number one in Australia, Canada, Lithuania, Switzerland and the United States, where it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in early 2022 after a record-breaking 59-week climb to number one. At 91 weeks, it became the longest charting song on the Hot 100 of all time, surpassing "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd. It would later be surpassed by Teddy Swims' "Lose Control" in May 2025. By June 2024, the song had accumulated more than three billion streams on Spotify. At the 2022 Brit Awards, "Heat Waves" was nominated for Best British Single.
Lead singer David Bayley stated that "Heat Waves" "is about loss and longing, and ultimately realising you are unable to save something". He said that "Also, this song is about memories and it's very nostalgic, and sometimes people feel more of that in the winter. Maybe that's part of the reason this song's hung around for so bloody long – everyone's locked inside and trapped in their own thoughts."
"Heat Waves" starts on a high and then drops into despair before rising again for a cheerful, optimistic finale, much like the crests and troughs of a real wave. Bayley came up with the chords one day while playing around on the guitar. He wrote the lyrics in just an hour, prompted by the death of a close friend whose birthday was in June.
In March 2021, the podcast Song Exploder featured an interview with Dave Bayley that specifically discussed the creation of "Heat Waves". He says "weirdly, Johnny Depp was the first person to hear this song." In it, he says that after writing/performing the song late at night alone in the studio, he decided to go home when he realized a stranger was sitting behind him. It was Depp who had been working in another studio.
Bayley also described the song’s production process in the same Song Exploder episode. He explained that the opening guitar riff originated as a phone recording before being developed into the track’s central motif. The arrangement was built by layering elements, including a pitched-down vocal sample used as the bass line. Bayley constructed the vocal harmonies from numerous takes, adding ad-libs to create what he called a “choir of myself.” He emphasized leaving space in the mix by stripping back certain sections so that the lead vocal and beat would stand out.
"Heat Waves" is an example of Dreamland's incorporation of hip hop and electropop elements into Glass Animals' sound. It and "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" rejects the band's acoustic percussion and marimbas in favor of 808 sounds and skittering hi-hats. NME's Hannah Mylrea categorized the song as "earnest R&B run through the Glass Animals filter", and Pitchfork's Ian Cohen argued its guitars "could be plucked from any number of 'wavy hip-hop' sample packs meant to emulate Frank Ocean's 'Ivy' on a bedroom producer's budget". A major theme on Dreamland is the pursuit of brief pleasures to cope with the hardships of life, such as lust for others. On "Heat Waves", Bayley sings repeatedly, "Sometimes all I think about is you/Late nights in the middle of June."
The band ran a remix competition for the track, with 19-year-old British producer Shakur Ahmad winning and having his remix issued by the band, alongside a remix by American DJ Diplo in August 2020. Another remix is a collaboration with American rapper Iann Dior. A piano Simlish version was recorded by Bayley for The Sims 4, and was featured in a limited-time "Sims Sessions" in-game music event in 2021.
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Heat Waves
"Heat Waves" is a song by British indie rock band Glass Animals released as a single from their third studio album Dreamland on 29 June 2020.
After initially gaining little attention, the song went on to be the band's signature song and biggest hit single to date. In addition to reaching number five on the UK Singles Chart and being a top-five hit in several other European countries, it reached number one in Australia, Canada, Lithuania, Switzerland and the United States, where it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in early 2022 after a record-breaking 59-week climb to number one. At 91 weeks, it became the longest charting song on the Hot 100 of all time, surpassing "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd. It would later be surpassed by Teddy Swims' "Lose Control" in May 2025. By June 2024, the song had accumulated more than three billion streams on Spotify. At the 2022 Brit Awards, "Heat Waves" was nominated for Best British Single.
Lead singer David Bayley stated that "Heat Waves" "is about loss and longing, and ultimately realising you are unable to save something". He said that "Also, this song is about memories and it's very nostalgic, and sometimes people feel more of that in the winter. Maybe that's part of the reason this song's hung around for so bloody long – everyone's locked inside and trapped in their own thoughts."
"Heat Waves" starts on a high and then drops into despair before rising again for a cheerful, optimistic finale, much like the crests and troughs of a real wave. Bayley came up with the chords one day while playing around on the guitar. He wrote the lyrics in just an hour, prompted by the death of a close friend whose birthday was in June.
In March 2021, the podcast Song Exploder featured an interview with Dave Bayley that specifically discussed the creation of "Heat Waves". He says "weirdly, Johnny Depp was the first person to hear this song." In it, he says that after writing/performing the song late at night alone in the studio, he decided to go home when he realized a stranger was sitting behind him. It was Depp who had been working in another studio.
Bayley also described the song’s production process in the same Song Exploder episode. He explained that the opening guitar riff originated as a phone recording before being developed into the track’s central motif. The arrangement was built by layering elements, including a pitched-down vocal sample used as the bass line. Bayley constructed the vocal harmonies from numerous takes, adding ad-libs to create what he called a “choir of myself.” He emphasized leaving space in the mix by stripping back certain sections so that the lead vocal and beat would stand out.
"Heat Waves" is an example of Dreamland's incorporation of hip hop and electropop elements into Glass Animals' sound. It and "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" rejects the band's acoustic percussion and marimbas in favor of 808 sounds and skittering hi-hats. NME's Hannah Mylrea categorized the song as "earnest R&B run through the Glass Animals filter", and Pitchfork's Ian Cohen argued its guitars "could be plucked from any number of 'wavy hip-hop' sample packs meant to emulate Frank Ocean's 'Ivy' on a bedroom producer's budget". A major theme on Dreamland is the pursuit of brief pleasures to cope with the hardships of life, such as lust for others. On "Heat Waves", Bayley sings repeatedly, "Sometimes all I think about is you/Late nights in the middle of June."
The band ran a remix competition for the track, with 19-year-old British producer Shakur Ahmad winning and having his remix issued by the band, alongside a remix by American DJ Diplo in August 2020. Another remix is a collaboration with American rapper Iann Dior. A piano Simlish version was recorded by Bayley for The Sims 4, and was featured in a limited-time "Sims Sessions" in-game music event in 2021.