Dev – In the Dark
2011 · Directed by Ethan Lader
580K Likes
Best comments
1.“Her voice is so croaky and seductive. Never thought I'd use those two in a sentence.”
More comments
- 2.“I loved this song when I was a kid. Now I understand the lyrics and I'm–”
- 3.“Who else is only here for the saxophone?”
The story
Dev said she wanted this one dark and sexy, with an Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton kind of feel. Director Ethan Lader, who regularly made videos for her and her producers The Cataracs, gave her exactly that. Dev stands in the dark while black-painted hands and arms reach out of the shadows and crawl all over her. A few of the hands were added digitally. Most were real – extras sat for hours getting painted and filmed. Add a club full of hard dancing, an albino ball python and a tarantula, and you get what Idolator called somewhat unsettling. Bill Lamb at About.com said it would leave you never looking at hands the same way again. Fair.
They shot it in Los Angeles in late April 2011, right before Dev went out as the opening act on Usher's OMG Tour. She said she took more control of this video than any before it, instead of letting the director drive.
The song rides a big saxophone hook that critics compared to Alexandra Stan's Mr. Saxobeat (one Dallas critic called the sax cheesy; the charts did not care). In the Dark climbed to number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, hit number one on the dance club chart and went platinum in the US by March 2012. Dev said she was aiming for tasteful yet sexual. A room full of disembodied hands is one way to split the difference.
