Glass Animals

The skilled U.K. genre-mashers Glass Animals bring synth pop, indie, R&B, and hip-hop together in innovative and inviting ways. On 2014's ZABA, Dave Bayley's androgynous falsetto and surreal lyrics fit perfectly with the album's rippling guitars and aquatic synths, resulting in alien yet alluring tracks like the certified-platinum single "Gooey." Glass Animals revealed new dimensions to their music, as well as Bayley's songwriting, on the artful character sketches of 2016's Mercury Prize-nominated How to Be a Human Being. They took a more personal approach on 2020's abstractly autobiographical Dreamland, mixing pop culture allusions from Bayley's '90s childhood into futuristic-sounding songs like the worldwide hit "Heat Waves." Glass Animals responded to this success -- which included a Grammy nomination -- with the imaginative expressions of our need to connect on 2024's I Love You So F***ing Much.

The son of a Welsh father and Israeli mother, singer/songwriter/guitarist Bayley spent his childhood in Massachusetts and his adolescence in Texas, immersing himself in American pop culture and the music of Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, Eminem, and the Neptunes. When he was 14, Bayley and his family settled in Oxford, England. It was there that he met his friends and future bandmates Joe Seaward (drums), Drew MacFarlane (guitars/keyboards), and Edmund Irwin-Singer (bass/keyboards). As a medical school student at King's College, Bayley's insomnia led him to write songs on his computer that he shared with his friends, and it wasn't long until they started playing them together. Choosing their name from random words in the dictionary, they became Glass Animals in 2010.

While they were still at university, Glass Animals issued their 2012 debut EP, Leaflings, on Kaya Kaya Records. One of the band's shows caught the attention of acclaimed producer Paul Epworth, who signed them to his label Wolf Tone. The Black Mambo/Exxus EP appeared in Europe in 2013, and the Glass Animals EP -- which featured "Woozy," a collaboration with rapper/singer/songwriter Jean Deaux -- was released that year in the U.S. To make their debut album, Glass Animals traded their Oxfordshire home studio for one in London and refined their percolating mix of indie pop, electronic, hip-hop, and R&B. Co-produced by Bayley and Epworth and inspired in part by William Steig's book The Zabajaba Jungle, ZABA arrived in June 2014. The album reached number 12 on Australia's ARIA chart and eventually topped Billboard's Alternative New Artist Chart in the U.S. a year after it was released. Similarly, the single "Gooey" was eventually certified platinum in the States. ZABA's critical acclaim and growing word-of-mouth popularity led the band to collaborate with Joey Bada$$ on the October 2015 single "Lose Control."

While on their lengthy world tour in support of ZABA, Glass Animals gathered stories from the people they encountered. They used these tales as lyrical inspiration for their second long-player, which they recorded in late 2015. How to Be a Human Being, a concept album with each song telling the story of a different character, appeared in August 2016. It fared well critically and on the charts, becoming a Top 20 hit in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., and hitting number 23 on the U.K. Albums Chart. In addition to snagging a 2017 Mercury Prize nomination, How to Be a Human Being won the 2018 Music Producers Guild Awards for U.K. Album of the Year and Self Producing Artist of the Year. It was also certified gold in the U.K. and Australia.

Glass Animals' momentum came to a halt in July 2018, when Seaward broke his leg and fractured his skull after being hit by a truck while riding his bike in Dublin. As he spent months learning to talk, walk, read, and play drums again, Bayley worked with artists outside of the band, producing and writing songs for Flume, 6LACK, and Khalid. Glass Animals started their return in November 2019 with the release of the Denzel Curry collaboration "Tokyo Drifting" and an Oxford show at the end of the year that saw Seaward play in front of a crowd for the first time since his accident. Informed by the hardships and healing the band experienced, August 2020's Dreamland introduced more autobiographical songwriting to Glass Animals' lively sound as well as lyrics and music influenced by the 1990s and early 2000s. The album reached number two on the U.K. charts and number seven in the U.S. The single "Heat Waves" topped Australia's ARIA chart in early 2021 (and returned to number one a year later on its way to becoming the first song ever to stay in the Australian Top Ten for more than a year). The song became a global hit, reaching number one in four other countries including the U.S., where it took a record-breaking 59 weeks to reach the peak position on the Hot 100. "Heat Waves" also earned a BRIT Award nomination for Best British Single, while Glass Animals were nominated for Best New Artist at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.

After Glass Animals' Dreamland success, Bayley co-wrote and produced songs on Florence + the Machine's 2022 album Dance Fever. He then wrote much of the band's next album in solitude, inspired by the power of human connection to dwarf the vast spaces of the universe. The sci-fi-tinged love songs of July 2024's I Love You So F***ing Much were accompanied by liner notes courtesy of writer Gabrielle Zevin, whose novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow explored similar themes. ~ Heather Phares