John Shearer/Getty Images via ABCImagine Dragons have scored their fourth top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 as “Thunder” jumps to #7. That’s partly because it’s featured in those commercials for Microsoft Surface Laptop…which are a lot easier to watch than the song’s bizarre, black and white video.
The clip, shot in Dubai and directed by Joseph Kahn — the guy behind the camera for Taylor Swift‘s “Look What You Made Me Do” — features Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds performing while some scary-looking alien beings — one of whom has a lizard tongue — contort their bodies in all sorts of crazy ways.
“We knew that we wanted an alien environment, or something that we could twist in a way that would be perceived as alien,” frontman Dan Reynolds tells ABC Radio about the video. “Dubai has some really strange architecture, amazing architecture and landscapes.”
Imagine Dragons’ videos have always had an air of strangeness to them — remember the underground puppet-fighting ring in the band’s “Radioactive” video?
“We always like to do something that makes people a little uncomfortable to watch,” says Reynolds. “From the birth of ‘Radioactive,’ that video, ’til now, we’ve always been pushing the boundaries of what makes us feel uncomfortable.”
“Thunder” appears on Imagine Dragons’ new album Evolve, which also features “Believer.” The band’s currently on tour in support of Evolve and Reynolds says “Thunder” has been a “fun” song to play live.
“It’s kind of calling out aspects of youth that maybe weren’t my favorite moments,” Reynolds says of the track, which features lyrics like “Kids were laughing in my classes/While I was scheming for the masses/Who do you think you are?/Dreaming ’bout being a big star.”
He laughs, “It helps me to have a renewed perspective of bitterness every night, which is fantastic!”
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