Jagwar Twin on Going to the Circus in the New Music Video for ‘Bad Feeling (Oompa Loompa)’

If you're on TikTok at all, we bet you're already more than familiar with Jagwar Twin's megahit "Bad Feeling (Oompa Loompa)."

Roy English, better known by the moniker Jagwar Twin, released the track in December, and it became an instant viral hit, with over 100 million streams around the world and 226k videos using the sound on TikTok alone. Today, March 7, he dropped its haunting music video. Brought to life by Ukrainian director Ganna Bogdan and shot at the L.A. Circus, the video has a spooky vibe and carnival aesthetics to match the bold tubas and accordions on the track, creating a visual spectacle that's also filled with meaningful symbolism. We just had to learn more about the video, and Roy was kind enough to fill us in on the details in the interview below.

The Story Behind 'Bad Feeling (Oompa Loompa)'

Jagwar Twin: It's a song about trusting your gut, trusting your intuition, and a song about our place in the cosmos.

 

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On Interpolating the Classic Willy Wonka Song

JT: I don't know… it really just came out, honestly. I didn't think much about it. I always have loved Willy Wonka. I love the Gene Wilder film. I used to watch it with my grandma growing up and I've watched it a lot of times since and have been unpacking all the different codes in it. It's such a deep movie. You could look at that movie, especially the Gene Wilder one, as a pattern in which you could orient your life if you put yourself as Charlie. It's the same movie as The Matrix. It's the same story as Pinocchio. It's a code.

What's cool about it is I had no idea there was a new movie coming out. It took a year or so to clear the sample interpolation, and because it took so long to do, it ended up being perfect timing with the new Wonka movie.

(Photo credit: Ryan Fleming)

 

Roy's Favorite Lyric

JT: "Cause the truth is a lie that nobody can tell, every kid on the block talks in riddles and prose." I love that line of "Bad Feeling (Oompa Loompa)" because I think we've kind of come to a place in the last few years where a lot of us didn't know what the truth was… and then sometimes the thing that is the truth is called a lie. I think a necessary mechanism for human consciousness to expand is us learning to trust ourselves. We're learning to trust our own feelings and intuition and not someone else's narrative—not our friends' narrative, not our parents' narrative, not the government, or religion or anything—it's what rings true to us.

 

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On the Music Video

JT: It was the circus of the world that we live in and the light and the dark of that… and there's a lot of cool symbolism and little Easter eggs hidden in the video.

('Bad Feeling' via Big Loud Rock)

 

For more on our new favorite music, click HERE to read our interview with Jelani Aryeh on his new single, "Sweater Club."