In July 2018, Glass Animals drummer Joe Seaward was riding his bicycle in Dublin when he was hit by a truck and nearly died. After spending weeks in the hospital unable to speak or move, he learned how to walk, talk and read again while his body healed. For his bandmates, the experience was excruciating and profound, the kind that made frontman Dave Bayley “zoom out” and ask existential questions about trauma, art and mortality. “I started thinking back to stories from my childhood in Texas before my family moved to England,” he tells Apple Music. The experience wasn’t necessarily pleasant. “Your brain goes to weird places.”
Bayley doesn’t particularly enjoy writing about himself, but wound up circling his own memories for the band’s introspective third album—specifically, those emotionally charged moments when innocence is lost. Strung together by interludes ripped from his family’s home videos and production inspired by early-aughts hip-hop (the soundtrack of his youth), Dreamland is a deeply personal account of Bayley’s journey into adulthood that chases an ever-looming question: “How did I get here?”In July 2018, Glass Animals drummer Joe Seaward was riding his bicycle in Dublin when he was hit by a truck and nearly died. After spending weeks in the hospital unable to speak or move, he learned how to walk, talk and read again while his body healed. For his bandmates, the experience was excruciating and profound, the kind that made frontman Dave Bayley “zoom out” and ask existential questions about trauma, art and mortality. “I started thinking back to stories from my childhood in Texas before my family moved to England,” he tells Apple Music. The experience wasn’t necessarily pleasant. “Your brain goes to weird places.”
Bayley doesn’t particularly enjoy writing about himself, but wound up circling his own memories for the band’s introspective third album—specifically, those emotionally charged moments when innocence is lost. Strung together by interludes ripped from his family’s home videos and production inspired by early-aughts hip-hop (the soundtrack of his youth), Dreamland is a deeply personal account of Bayley’s journey into adulthood that chases an ever-looming question: “How did I get here?”false2025-11-08 07:05:54Dreamland20222022-08-052022-08-0587ElectronicPop1439662348187e5d07c81-99a9-4ba7-8dff-9b25fc0c882f20395131-fbde-43ce-b141-b700cfdae99c1ccd441a-a906-4773-8e72-e4055732a784/media/data/media4/Music/Glass Animals/Dreamland/folder.jpgGlass AnimalsGlass Animals & Denzel CurryGlass AnimalsGlass Animals are an English indie rock band formed in Oxford in 2010. Founded and led by singer, songwriter, and producer Dave Bayley, the group also features his childhood friends Joe Seaward, Ed Irwin-Singer and Drew MacFarlane. Bayley wrote and produced all three Glass Animals albums. Bayley spent his childhood in Massachusetts and Texas before relocating to Oxford, where he met the other band members at school. Their first album, Zaba (2014), spawned the single "Gooey", which was eventually certified platinum in the United States. Their second full album, How to Be a Human Being, received positive reviews and won in two categories at the 2018 MPG Awards for UK Album of the Year and Self Producing Artist of the Year, as well as a spot on the Mercury Prize shortlist. The third, Dreamland, peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart and number seven on the US Billboard 200.
The band is best known for their biggest hit single "Heat Waves", which went viral on social media platform TikTok. It reached number one in Australia in February 2021 and was voted number one on the Triple J Hottest 100 of 2020. The song surpassed two billion streams on Spotify by September 2022, and eventually reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number five on the UK Singles Chart. At the 2022 Brit Awards, the band were nominated for two Brit Awards (Best British Rock Act and "Heat Waves" for Best British Single). They received their first Grammy nomination in the Best New Artist category at the 2022 Grammy Awards.