Major Lazer and Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford recruited more than 200 artists from 28 countries for the Earth Day-inspired video for their collaborative single “Lay Your Head on Me.”
Over the past month, with musicians and dancers around the world self-isolating due to the coronavirus outbreak, the video’s director Filip Nilsson put out a call for videos of people dancing along with the single; the dance routine was created by renowned choreographer Ryan Heffington.
Nilsson said in a statement: “When we started working with this simple idea over a month ago COVID-19 had just started to get a grip of the world. During these weeks we have seen tapes from people all over the world. The response was way more than could have been expected and it was amazing to see the different interpretations of what we requested from people. It’s so touching that all these people took the time to learn the dance routine or to play the music in such a short amount of time. The positivity and honest love they shared is something I really wanted to come through in this video.”
Keeping with the Earth Day theme, artists from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cape Verde, China (Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei), France, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, the U.A.E., U.K., Ukraine and the U.S. all contributed to the video. Check out the video’s YouTube page for the extensive list of artists.
Mumford and Diplo also appeared on CBS This Morning Wednesday to discuss the collaboration and the video.
“I feel like it’s a celebration of the human spirit,” Mumford said. “It’s just people at home, like playing instruments, people dancing, people with their neighbors and spreading this message that we love in this song that we’ve done together. And yeah, I just think it’s a celebration of people at home. And I love it.”