Songfacts®:

• Here, Dan Reynolds sings about having big dreams of being a star on stage as a kid. He recalls being laughed by his classmates for such ambitions, but in the second verse, the Dragons frontman flips the script on those who mocked him.
  
  Now I'm smiling from the stage
  While you were clapping in the nose bleeds
• Reynolds explained to the Las Vegas Review Journal that the song is about coming into one's own.
  
  "'Thunder' is: 'I'm so happy for a really (crappy) middle school and high school existence and getting kicked out of college,' " he said. "It's reflecting on all those things and saying, 'Good, I'm happy for all that because that brought me to this place of being. It created angst inside of me that bred art.'"
• The song was co-produced by Imagine Dragons and Alex Da Kid, who is probably best known for his collaboration with Eminem and Rihanna ("Love The Way You Lie"). He has been a regular collaborator with the Dragons for a while now and worked on several of the group's previous hits including "Radioactive," "Demons," "Sucker For Pain."
• The song soundtracked Jeep's summer 2017 "One Drive" commercial. The ad asserts that freedom is never far away behind the wheel of their SUV brand. The track also featured in Microsoft Surface Laptop's "Powerfully Beautiful" ad, which aired a few months later.
• The music video was directed by Joseph Kahn (Eminem and Rihanna's "Love The Way You Lie", Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do") and shot in Dubai. The clip features Dan Reynolds performing while some creepy alien beings contort their bodies in all sorts of strange ways.
  
  "We knew that we wanted an alien environment, or something that we could twist in a way that would be perceived as alien," Reynolds told ABC Radio. "Dubai has some really strange architecture, amazing architecture and landscapes."
• That's Dan Reynolds singing the song's high-pitched chorus rather than one of his three daughters - Arrow, Gia and Coco.
  
  "It's funny 'cause a lot of people have asked me if that's my five-year-old girl who's singing the 'Thunder' part in it," Reynolds told ABC Radio, referring to Arrow. "It's actually my own voice that I just pitched up!"
• "Thunder" logged its 52nd week on the Hot 100 dated May 5, 2018. It was Imagine Dragons' fourth song to spend at least a year on the chart, an unprecedented achievement. The band was already the first act with three such hits: "Radioactive," "Demons," and "Believer."