Eat your hearts out Spice Girls, because Glass Animals are coming for you. The Oxford four-piece have officially matched a US chart record previously set by the female super group after their 2020 single “Heat Waves” spent a fourth consecutive week atop the Billboard Hot 100.
The single, which was first featured on the album Dreamland spent a long time climbing its way up the chart to the top spot – 59 weeks to be exact. Another record Glass Animals can now put on their already impressive resume.
Spending four straight weeks on top of the chart is the longest period spent there by a British group since “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls took over the world in 1997. Do Glass Animals have similar plans for world domination? Will a movie be made about them, where the members play fictionalized versions of themselves?
Other British groups to reach the top and stay there for four straight weeks included Pink Floyd with “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II),” The Rolling Stones” and with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Honky Tonk Woman,” and Queen with “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”
And the all-time record for a British group spending consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 is unsurprisingly The Beatles. “Hey Jude” dominated the chart in 1968, spending nine weeks there before finally falling back down.
Last month at the Brit Awards, Glass Animals spoke to NME about the success of “Heat Waves:”
“There’s something in it. It landed at the right time. I feel like everyone in the pandemic has been feeling nostalgic. No one was going out and creating new memories, they were all reliving the old ones. This song is about that – it’s about memories, it’s about missing someone, everyone’s been missing people in this age.”