It’s the end of the world as we know it, and the Rolling Stones feel fine. “Doom and Gloom,” the venerable rockers’ first new song in seven years (from the new compilation GRRR!), takes a ripped-from-the-headlines lyrical approach, with crisis-wracked references to fracking and war-induced debt. The video for the track, directed by longtime Madonna visual collaborator Jonas Åkerlund, is a wonderfully lavish, fanciful, ridiculous literalization of those lyrics.
Noomi Rapace, who played Lisbeth Salander in the original Swedish The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo films, stars — flashes of her breasts presumably render the clip NSFW — but the clip is really about the juxtaposition of playfully apocalyptic imagery with shots of the Stones rocking like nothing has changed. So, yup, zombies appear, but Rapace also cavorts in a pile of money, totes a gun as a mustachioed oilman, devours junk food, hitchhikes topless, and other head-exploding sights. “Dance with me,” Mick Jagger commands, and not even Rapace can refuse.
