Being in a band is tricky. When you start out, you can’t take yourself too seriously or you won’t be flexible enough to deal with the inevitable challenges. And when you do get big — which almost never happens — you want to be taken seriously, but if you’re too serious, you risk alienating people. That’s why Imagine Dragons‘s goofy as hell new video for “Follow You” is such a feat. It’s relentlessly self-ribbing, but it also showcases the band doing what they do at the top of their game.
It also has major help from two extremely funny people: Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That alone is enough to puncture the veneer of a Serious Rock Band, but Imagine Dragons go further, with band leader Dan Reynolds stripping off his shirt and making an idiot of himself on a few occasions. Nicely done, Dan!
McElhenney, who knows a thing or two about performing shirtless dances onstage, commits to this video in a way you have to admire, but Olson might be the real MVP for how she gets to sit back and watch it all (apart from one brief, incredible moment that’s effectively an Easter egg). If that wasn’t enough, the band dunks on itself by invoking their fellow Las Vegas arena champs The Killers in a genuinely funny bit at the top of the clip.
“Follow You” — and its extremely well-done video from Matt Eastin — comes ahead of Imagine Dragons’s forthcoming fifth studio album, also set to include “Cutthroat,” a song that came out of Reynolds’s experiences with ayahuasca. “Follow You” is the soft side of “Cutthroat”‘s fury, and Reynolds recently told Rolling Stone it’s one of the few love songs the band has, inspired by him reuniting with his wife, Aja.
“‘Follow You’ is about loyalty,” he told the magazine. “It’s inspired by the Beach Boys, which I grew up on, and it was a very playful, fun song.”
As far as husband-and-wife reunions go, the “Follow You” video also allows McElhenney and Olson, who’ve been married for 13 years, to have a night out together and watch some live music. What a dream. Watch it above.
