Glass Animals’ Heat Waves has reached a new peak in the UK in a week that saw it hit one billion global streams across all platforms and enter Spotify’s global Top 10.
According to Official Charts Company data, the track, first released in June last year, climbed 18-10 in the UK singles chart thanks to 25,206 sales, comprising 24,676 sales from streams and 530 downloads. It was streamed 2,814,809 times on audio platforms and 257,783 times on video. To date, it has sold 663,485 copies in the UK.
Parent album Dreamland peaked at No.2 and has 36,191 sales to date.
The song has also entered Spotify’s US chart at No.10. It has 545,696,050 global streams on the platform so far.
Glass Animals have now become the first UK band to break into Spotify’s global Top 10 since Clean Bandit in 2018. Heat Waves is 2021’s biggest song on Spotify from a current British group. The track has double platinum status in the USA and was crowned No.1 on Triple J’s Hot 100 in Australia.
Earlier this year, Music Week spoke to Glass Animals’ team about the breakout success of Heat Waves.
“Heat Waves has been an incredible journey, it's a very modern hit,” said Polyor co-president Tom March. “[Singer] Dave Bayley told me that he knew he had something special, but if he had told me then quite how far it would go I would never have believed him. From the moment the record was released it reacted, and nine months from release it’s still growing. It has reacted through the roof in every environment, so we could read the data and use it to help take it to wider audiences.”
Manager Amy Morgan added: “Every time the song is given a platform it seems to react and key moments in the campaign have given it that platform. Some were more traditional, like radio playlists or the FIFA sync, and then some were unexpected, like a piece of Minecraft fan fiction that went viral.”
Recently, the song has been boosted by TikTok, as creator Juliette Cullen chose it as the backing to a video about a lack of curly fries in certain branches of McDonalds that went viral on the platform. On the September 3 chart, a near 200% increase in consumption saw it reach peak of No.18. This week, it climbed higher still.
The group play London’s Alexandra Palace in November, while their new single I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance) has just been released.
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