“Heat Waves” by Glass Animals

"Heat Waves" came out on 29 June 2020 as a single from Dreamland, Glass Animals' third album, and it took its sweet time: the song barely registered at first, then kept creeping upward until it became the British band's signature song and biggest hit. Dave Bayley wrote it on his own, produced it and helped engineer it, and Manny Marroquin mixed it into a woozy, heat-hazed blend of psychedelic pop and slow-rolling R&B, with a melancholy hook that clings like summer sweat.

In America it spent a record 59 weeks climbing before it finally reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in early 2022, held on there for five weeks and logged 91 weeks on the chart, the longest run ever at the time. It also went to number one in Australia, Canada, Lithuania and Switzerland, reached number five in the UK and drew a Brit Awards nomination for Best British Single.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.