Songfacts®:

• The Gothic novel Dracula, published in 1897 by Bram Stoker, cemented the image of the modern vampire. Its central figure, Count Dracula, is portrayed as the archetypal vampire, damned by God, steeped in the black arts and cursed to prowl the night. Though powerful and terrifying, his abilities fade with the rising sun, leaving him weakened and vulnerable by day. In this song, Tame Impala's Kevin Parker conjures imagery of an all-night revelry in which daylight threatens to end the party, hence the refrain "Run from the sunlight, Dracula."
• Like many Tame Impala songs, "Dracula" is both playful and oddly profound. Much like "The Less I Know the Better," it's about the pull between what we want in our nights, and what we know will come with dawn. Dracula's curse, Parker seems to suggest, is really just the same one we all face: the music has to stop sometime.
• Kevin Parker produced the track and co-wrote it with fellow Aussie songwriter Sarah Aarons (Zedd's "Stay," Maren Morris' "Girl," Ravyn Lenae's "Love Me Not"). It was the first Tame Impala single to credit a co-writer since Parker collaborated with Pond co-founder Jay Watson in 2012 for "Elephant."
• Musically, "Dracula" sits in the same after-hours neighborhood as "Let It Happen" and "Eventually," only here the beat is bigger, the synths shimmer longer, and the bass thumps like it's been handed a Red Bull. Parker told Apple Music's Zane Lowe it started as one of those "raw, minimal" sketches he likes to tinker with. And "then just sort of slowly expanded into pop. I kind of just give the song what it wants, like a Max Martin song."
• The video, directed by Julian Klincewicz (who also handled "End Of Summer"), doubles down on the nocturnal theme. Shot in the Australian outback, it depicts moonlit gatherings, portable house parties, and the kind of communal energy you'd expect if Dracula traded his cape for a bucket hat.
• The song began as two different ideas - one built around the lyric "Run from the sun like Dracula," and another with the line "In the end, I hope it's you and me." Parker eventually merged the two after his wife told him how much she loved the original "Dracula" concept.
  
  What followed was a long, piecemeal writing process that stretched over several years, with Parker frequently calling London-based Sarah Aarons from Australia to tweak verses and rework melodies. "Sometimes he'd call me, and I'd be in London, and it would be 11 p.m. for me and 9 a.m. for him," Sarah Aarons recalled to Billboard. "We just had so many moments where he'd be like, 'The verse is bothering me.'"
  
  Parker's perfectionism kept the song evolving - each revision reshaping what it was "about" - until the two ideas finally locked into place.