How Glass Animals Used Music to Overcome an Existential Crisis

Frontman, songwriter, and producer Dave Bayley found connection in solitude and solace in settling down on fourth studio album I Love You So F***ing Much.

by Maggie McPhee

Published on July 17, 2024

When Dave Bayley of Glass Animals gets in touch with RANGE in Montreal, a heat wave has swallowed the city — the kind of suffocating swelter that leads to sleepless nights, or one that could ratchet up to a maddening delirium if, for example, one were to have the UK pop group’s stratospheric hit “Heat Waves” stuck in one’s head for over 48 hours. Bayley seems to be a lightning rod for both earworm melodies and freak weather events, like the life-threatening storm that precipitated Glass Animals’ fourth studio album I Love You So F***ing Much.

Before that fateful day, Bayley had been weathering a storm on the inside. Glass Animals released their third LP, Dreamland, in the summer of 2020 and when it reached record-breaking success, Bayley and his bandmates were in forced isolation, separated from one another and their fans. “Heat Waves” became the first song from a UK act to claim the Billboard Hot 100’s top spot for five consecutive weeks since the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe,” the first single to reach #1 with a sole writer and producer since Pharell’s “Happy,” and eventually claimed the top spot on Billboard’s Year-End list for 2022, but Bayley was stuck in his bedroom, as he tells RANGE, “very detached from reality.”

“It was mid pandemic and I think a lot of people’s existential crises were starting to come on to the dancefloor, rustle up some moves,” he says. “And then, yeah, mine was just there in the corner.”

The inner turmoil gnawed at him, until a literal storm brought it to an impasse. “I ended up getting stuck in this house on a cliff and got COVID and thought I was gonna die, because there was this huge storm and landslide warnings and all these trees were falling down and I was like, ‘This is the end.’ That’s when the existential crisis hits me like a wall. Yeah, it was great,” he says with a laugh.

Over the following two weeks, the songwriter poured himself into new material: 10 love songs that crackle with the energy of a man creating his way to salvation. Perched on that cliff overlooking Los Angeles, Bayley observed the human activity in view, families in their homes, people hugging and arguing and hanging out. Those crisscrossing relationships and infinite interactions made him feel connected to something bigger than himself. The alienation that consumed him melted away, and he rediscovered himself in music making.

“It felt very good and it felt right,” he says of those weeks. “In music, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do what I thought was right, which is to be more extroverted and do social media stuff and work all the time on every opportunity that came in. I guess I kind of forgot that the thing that makes me feel the most like me is just sitting in my room writing music alone. I’m a bit of an introverted person, and it’s okay to be that, to embrace that, and not feel guilty about it.”

Even as an introvert, Bayley has a knack for understanding both the minutiae of relationships and the epic background against which our small human lives play out. Though the universe can make us feel small, our human connections are just as vast and mysterious — whether that makes us insignificant or important just depends on our outlook. Each track on I Love You So F***ing Much, vignettes of varying love stories, contains these multitudes.

When Glass Animals released their debut album, Zaba, in 2010, they didn’t know anyone in the music industry. After Dreamland, Bayley had a line up of pop superstars knocking at his door hoping to collaborate – in fact, he recently revealed that “Heat Waves” nearly landed in the hands of Rihanna. I Love You So F***ing Much marks the group’s first release since garnering international acclaim, and unlike Dreamland, they’ll get to release and tour it in the traditional sense. Fitting for an album about overcoming malaise through human connection.

“I love music because there’s a community and a togetherness that it creates, and I felt like we really missed out on that last time,” he says. COVID protocols meant the Dreamland tour felt disconnected and precarious. “I think those days are over and it will allow us to embrace that sense of community and togetherness that music brings. It’s the whole reason for [touring] and I’m very excited about it.”

I Love You So F***ing Much features 10 tales about love that brim with the nuance and vivacity of existence and all its contradicting complexity. Bayley, who writes and produces his work on his own, fought his way out of a depression by delving into the beauty of the collective. Each track contains the light and dark of life itself, serious stories wrapped up in exuberant electronic pop. Once released, those stories will be absorbed by audiences, transformed by their individual interpretations yet connecting them through something universal. All told, it’s an example of the way in which human interconnectivity can accumulate into a whir, into a different kind of storm.