You might assume Cody Johnson‘s striking video for “I’m Gonna Love You” was put together using lots of post-production tricks. But the Utah shoot was every bit as dramatic as it looks.
“We got in at about 4:00 that morning, and we had to be up at 7:00, and I was dog tired,” Cody recalls. “And they got me standing out here in the middle of this dadgum salt flat with about 550 of these wild mustangs, which I love horses.”
“But these Mustangs are different,” he explains. “It’s like frickin’ zebras. They’re nuts. They start running around with these ATVs, stirring ’em up. And when you see ’em running behind me, you know, like ‘the objects in mirror look closer than they appear’? They were right behind me.”
“I used to ride bulls. I’m not scared of it,” he adds. “It is what it is. If I’m gonna get run over, it is what it is.”
The former prison guard admits it was still pretty disorienting.
“They’re coming by and you can feel the ground shaking,” he remembers. “And I’m walking past and I’m singing, and there’s one dude holding up a [speaker] playing the song a thousand yards away. And I’m like, ‘I don’t even know if I’m in the right part of the song.””
At one point, Cody started wondering if it was even worth it: “I’m thinking, ‘what are we doing here, man?’ My hands are all cracking from the salt and my throat is dry.”
One look at the footage, however, changed his mind.
“It was gorgeous. I mean, it was some of the best footage we’ve ever captured,” he says.
Though it looks like Carrie Underwood‘s part might’ve been shot nearby, she and Cody actually finished it in a studio together.
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