Glass Animals are heading into the great unknown: “Is it a risk? We’ll see, I guess”

From ‘Heat Waves’ to heartache: Glass Animals’ ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ is a cosmic exploration of human connection – a vulnerable, genre-bending odyssey that proves they’re far more than a one-international-megahit band.

Words: Ali Shutler.

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How on earth do you follow up a moment like ‘Heat Waves’? Released as the fourth single from Glass Animals’ expansive, gorgeous ‘Dreamland’ album, it was a sleeper hit that turned the quirky British art-rock group into one of the biggest guitar bands in the world. A yearning, hopeful song driven by nostalgia and a touch of pain, it was the perfect slice of escapism to counteract the anxiety and uncertainty that came with the pandemic. Inspired by the death of a close friend, it was also the most tender, personal song vocalist Dave Bayley had ever written. Until that point, anyway.

To have that connect with millions of people was very scary and hard to believe, he explains. “I always loved it because of its emotional impact, but it was tucked away at the end of the album and I don’t think anyone had particularly high hopes for it as a single,” he admits, especially when the band were advised to basically scrap any and all expectations for ‘Dreamland’ due to the pandemic. However, the song just continued to reach more and more people, thanks to viral TikTok trends, a converted spot on the FIFA 21 soundtrack, a remix contest held by the band and countless other reasons. ‘Heat Waves’ charted in the UK, broke records in Australia and eventually topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2022 after a historic 59-week-long climb. “It felt like the secret was out,” admits Dave. 

“‘Heat Waves’ and ‘Dreamland’ opened so many doors for us, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to go through every single one”

dave bayley

It’s not like the band could celebrate, though. When they were able to tour, it was with the knowledge that they had no insurance, so if the pandemic forced another lockdown or the band got sick, they’d be bankrupt. At one point, their lighting engineer caught COVID and was forced to do his job from a van outside the venue, reacting to a GoPro stream of the gig. Dave also missed the 2022 Grammys where Glass Animals were nominated for Best New Artist because of COVID, finding himself locked away in a Las Vegas hotel room instead. “It was surreal and stressful,” he says. “It felt like the whole thing could go down at any minute.” The euphoric rush of spending 90 minutes playing a joyful, sold-out show was followed by hours of isolation and worry as the band nervously toured across the UK and North America. The whole experience left Dave feeling burnt out and he purposefully avoided that big, looming question of ‘what next’ by writing with other people.

“‘Heat Waves’ and ‘Dreamland’ opened so many doors for us, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to go through every single one,” says Dave, who worked on a number of different projects alongside people he considered heroes, creating film scores, writing pop songs and co-writing and co-producing Florence + the Machine’s ‘Dance Fever’.

“I was really enjoying writing with other people because not all the pressure is on you. You don’t have to go to a particularly heavy place,” he explains. “But it was keeping me from facing the reality of the situation.”

In April 2023, he rented an absolute bargain on AirBnB in Los Angeles to try and work through some ideas of his own. He ended up isolated for two weeks after catching COVID again, though. “I basically had an existential crisis,” he admits, which isn’t surprising given everything that had come before. “I definitely wallowed for a bit, but I think I had to be hopeful,” he says. “It was either give in to the darkness or reach out and grab something. Luckily, the rock that I grabbed onto was human connection and how beautifully complex that can be.”

That struggle and safety is how Glass Animal’s fifth album, ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ came about.

“I’d tried to change how we do things, but that forced helplessness made me realise that I’m most comfortable writing on my own, and that’s fine,” says Dave. In 14 days, he wrote close to 60 tracks to try and survive the ordeal, but it was all so personal he wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to release any of it. “Then I showed it to the rest of the band, and they were overwhelmingly encouraging,” which was a big deal because Dave could tell the nervousness and pressure about the future had started to creep in. 

With so many songs to choose from, Glass Animals chased the ones that hit the hardest for ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’. “I’m a sucker for a song that makes you feel something,” says Dave. “I was drawn to the ones that inspired the biggest emotional reaction in me, and I didn’t want two songs to do the same thing.”

Glass Animals quickly set about crafting a world out of those scrappy demos. It turns out the answer to “How on earth do you follow up a moment like ‘Heat Waves’?” is “Go to space”.

“I was so high, I could practically see the curvature of the Earth”

dave bayley

‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ pulls inspiration from the soundtrack to cult 80s sci-fi films that lean into cheese, the groundbreaking 2021: A Space Odyssey movie and the 1978 The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio series. A lot of the songs are built around vintage synths that were meant to sound like the future, with Dave also sampling various BBC Space Sounds collections he bought on vinyl. The record also makes nods to early electronic and punk bands, adding to Glass Animals’ existing blend of R&B, indie, pop and dance.

“I’ve always wanted to make a space record,” admits Dave. “I just never really worked out how to do it before because it always came out too cold.” However, space felt like the perfect metaphor for the existential crisis he was battling at the time. “It’s this massive vacuum, so of course it makes you feel absolutely miniscule when you think about it.” Dave searched for things that would ground him to avoid getting lost in the expanse. 

“I was trying to claw my way out of that crisis by thinking about the things that are important, that make you feel real again, and that’s always human connection,” he continues. He hadn’t set out to write a record, but intimate love stories were pouring out of him. “I was very much along for the ride,” he says.

The fact his AirBnB was on the very edge of a cliff also helped. “I was so high, I could practically see the curvature of the Earth. It felt like I was in space, looking down on these people going about their lives,” says Dave. Taking Glass Animals to space just felt right.

The record starts with the zippy bounce of ‘Show Pony’, which acts as the launchpad for the record by exploring the relationships we experience growing up. “You see how friends, family, neighbours interact and you absorb it to create this idea of what love is supposed to be. From that very Earthy start, the album goes off into space and gets really dark and miserable,” grins Dave. “Love is also loss, sadness and uncertainty, after all.”

Lead single ‘Creatures In Heaven’ wrestles with longing, guilt and regret while recent single ‘A Tear in Space (Airlock)’ finds itself right at the depth of the album’s despair. “It’s a dark one,” he says, with the song leaning into the idea that “object disappearance, it’s a true phenomenon”. The theory goes that when things mean so little to you, they fall through a glitch in the matrix. It’s why you sometimes can’t find socks or keys. “That song is about feelings so meaningless to somebody, that you practically disappear.”

Talk about joyous. “But there’s a comfort in going that bleak, I think,” Dave explains. “There’s an optimism in coming out the other side, and even realising the bleakness of a situation is refreshing.”

Case in point, the album’s closing track ‘Lost In The Ocean’. “It basically says that everything is going to be ok. Yes, life is going to get dark; it’s going to hurt, and at some point, you’re going to want to get away from everything, but there’s sunshine to be found as well. It’s an idea I keep coming back to,” admits Dave. “When I’m trying to dig myself out of a shit day, that song creeps in.”

“From that very Earthy start, the album goes off into space and gets really dark and miserable”

dave bayley

It’s a month before ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ is released, and Dave is still finding little universes within the record that reveal themselves to him. He’s excited about sharing it with the world, but there are nerves as well. “It’s a really personal record. It kinda feels like I’m about to walk out into the world naked and be judged.” His mum telling him the album was putting him in a vulnerable position hasn’t helped either. 

It’s more directly personal than anything Glass Animals have done before for a number of reasons. These songs weren’t exactly written to be shared, but the reaction to ‘Dreamland’ also gave the band the confidence to get more vulnerable. “It was a record about memories of other people, but there was a comfort in knowing people accepted that, which I found encouraging,” says Dave.

“I felt very selfish writing this album because I was absolutely writing for myself. I guess I grew up thinking it was selfish to talk about yourself,” he says. It was one of the other reasons he felt unsure about sharing these songs. However, he looked at some of his favourite artists, like the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Nina Simone, who have always created incredibly personal songs. “They’re the songs that I latch onto whenever I’m going through a dark place. It’s how I justified this album, really,” he says.

“It is a vulnerable record, and it’s always a risk doing something personal because any criticism will sting. I feel like a protective mother right now, and I’ve got to get over that,” he adds.

Sure, there was plenty of pressure, expectation and all those questions about what Glass Animals do with their newfound success, but ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ never feels like it’s pushing back against anything. There’s no ‘Heat Waves’ part two, but the band aren’t burning down everything that’s come before, either. “I can’t think of anything more boring than doing the same thing again,” says Dave. “I have a very short attention span. I would lose interest, and I imagine a lot of other people would too.” This is the fourth album Glass Animals have released, though, and the band are used to being told how much things have or haven’t changed. “I just hope no one feels humdrum about this record,” says Dave. “I always want to inspire some sort of emotional reaction.”

“It kinda feels like I’m about to walk out into the world naked and be judged”

dave bayley

Despite all the fear and uncertainty that helped create it, ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ doesn’t exactly shy away from making big, heartfelt declarations. Just look at the title. “When I came up with it, it felt like a real ‘fuck it’ moment, which is how I felt about a lot of the songs as well,” says Dave. “Now it’s about to come out, though, I’m starting to worry I’ve given too much of myself away,” he adds with a grin. 

“Some of this record is pretty blunt. I don’t know how people are going to react to that,” Dave offers. “I don’t know if people react that well to big, grand, bold statements,” he adds. “‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ is definitely a nerdy record. I think there are some pop songs in there too. Is it a risk? We’ll see, I guess.”

However, Glass Animals did have to cut a lot of the songs that make up ‘I Love You F***ing Much’ down from the nine-minute versions they started out as. “There might be a director’s cut version of the album to come, if the label will let it through their sieve of censorship,” Dave grins.

“I wrote and produced everything on the album. I guess in that sense, there is something to prove… which is dawning on me right now,” Dave continues. “Growing up, being an introvert was seen as this negative thing, but I found a lot of comfort in accepting that part of myself with this album.”

He goes on to say that if ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ is out to prove anything, it’s that Glass Animals will keep taking risks because that’s so important to the band. “When you stop doing that, you’re probably done,” he says. “This album is the right thing for us to be doing. If I didn’t think it was a risky album, I probably would have binned it. If I didn’t think it was pushing the band and my songwriting forward, I would have binned it. It does all those things, and it still feels so emotional.” Dave’s stream-of-consciousness writing means he’s still finding little universes and big epiphanies within the songs.

“If you look at the human connections that surround you, they are so complex and mysterious, they are bigger than actual universes,” he says, once again bouncing between the vastness of space and the intimacy of human relationships. “Love is so complicated. It can hit you like a light coming down from heaven but I promise you it will also make you sadder than you’ve ever been,” he adds. “But you come out the other side of that and realise other people have gone on the exact same journey. Because of that, there’s actually a real beauty to those feelings of hurt.”

It’s an album that celebrates connection, with the band unafraid to say exactly how they’re feeling. “I get the sense that people want to say these things, but can’t in a lot of circumstances,” Dave offers. “It’s definitely not watered down.”

“Beyond that, I don’t know if I’ve thought too much about what I want this album to mean to other people,” he says. “For me, it was this beacon of hope that pulled me out of a dark place. I hope it can do that for other people because that’s what the best albums do.”

“If I didn’t think it was a risky album, I probably would have binned it”

dave bayley

Peppering loneliness and an ominous sense of dread with bursts of euphoria was important for Dave on a personal level, but it also feels like a vital energy to be putting out into the universe right now. “The world is a very strange, tense place right now and there is a huge amount of uncertainty,” he starts. “I was feeling that for different reasons when I wrote this record, and I was trying to find some hope within that. Everyone seems to be looking for a bit of hope right now, because it’s scary out there.”

Over the last decade, he’s seen Glass Animals’ fanbase reacting to their music in increasingly personal ways. “They’ve told stories inspired by our songs and proudly explained how our records made them feel. It’s incredibly encouraging to know you can say something personal, and have support like that come back,” says Dave. “That conversation is really beautiful.” It has also reminded him how unifying music can be. 

It’s perhaps why he’s so excited to get back on the road and see how these songs change shape. “There is this huge pressure for artists to replicate exactly what they did on the record when they play live, but there are more exciting things to be done,” he says. 

He’s a big fan of having fun onstage, but knows there’s a balance to be found. He promises Glass Animals’ upcoming shows may have moments that will, in his words, destroy your heart, but for the most part the band are out to make people smile. “The best thing about live music is that togetherness,” he offers. Dave still gets incredibly nervous before every show, but as soon as he steps onstage and feels all that emotion coming back at him, he’s ready for action. “You realise those shows aren’t about any one person, and it becomes this community. That one-ness is so important,” Dave adds, once again grasping onto the themes at the heart of ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’. “It’s like a little holiday away from reality, and all of you are doing it together,” which is the most beautiful thing in the world, and beyond, and I think that’s the most beautiful thing in the world.” ■

Taken from the August 2024 issue of Dork. Glass Animals’ album ‘I Love You So F***ing Much’ is out 19th July.