Last year Don Diablo and Matt Nash had an unexpected sleeper hit with “Starlight,” a track that became a festival staple thanks to its easy sing-along chorus and EDM drops. Originally released through Axwell’s Axtone Records, the track is getting a second life through Ultra Records this spring. Despite “Starlight’s” popularity (7 million YouTube plays), it never had an official video until now. Watch the exclusive premiere of “Starlight” here.
The clip’s director, Kyle Padilla, was brought on to the project after Diablo made a cameo appearance in Nicky Romero and Krewella’s video for “Legacy,” which Padilla directed.
In broad terms, the video for “Starlight” tells the story of a guy and a girl at several stages of their lives, focusing primarily on their rave love affair. Starring the same two actors featured in Padilla’s 2012 video for NERVO and Hook N Sling’s “Reason,” the clip is replete with light shows, day-glo accessories, and lots of PLUR.
“I’m passionate about EDM,” Padilla says. “It is my generation’s genre so I wanted to pay homage to what I believe makes it special – its ability to connect people and facilitate experiences that help to create lifelong relationships.”
Already familiar with the song by the time he was asked to direct the video, the project became an unexpectedly personal one for Padilla.
“My grandfather had passed around the time I was asked to write [the treatment for] ‘Starlight’ and my mind was actually on my grandmother a lot,” he explains. “I couldn’t fathom what it must feel like to lose someone you’ve spent over half of your life with. It made me realize that there may come a day in all of our lives when we look back and cherish the special moments we shared with our loved ones – moments that may have seemed insignificant at the time, but, as it turned out, impacted the trajectory of our lives.”
While the video is padded with tender moments amid the more festive ones, such sentimentality didn’t interfere with the celebratory feelings on set.
“It was like a big party that didn’t stop until after we wrapped,” Padilla maintains, affirming the inexorable spirit of the EDM generation.