It's been a slow yet steady road to success for Elle King's breakout hit "Ex's and Oh's": the song has just been certified gold for sales of half a million downloads, and its outrageous video has racked up more than 6.5 million views on YouTube. King says she was initially concerned -- yet thrilled -- that the clip's concept would get her "in trouble."
The humorous and extremely sexually-suggestive clip features King cavorting with a group of half-naked guys, and she says she had a LOT of say over which said guys got to be in the video with her. "Oh, I cast them all. I picked them -- even the weird ones, yeah," she tells ABC Radio.
"The music video, it was a really fun thing for me and it was something I was kind of a little scared and a bit hesitant about," King adds. "Because when I read the treatment that got sent in, it made me feel like I was gonna get in trouble, which I obviously loved!"
"I emailed the director at like 4:30 in the morning," she continues. "And was like, 'Hey, listen, like I’m a crazy person. Are you crazy? You seem crazy. Can I cast the guys, and will we have fun?'" She laughs, "He wrote back immediately and so I was like, 'Oh yeah, you’re crazy!'”
King says, "He let me cast the guys, he let me be a part of the whole process and it was really, really fun and I think it ended up being a good product. And I think only a couple of people got mad at me about it, so I think that means it’s a good thing!"
King, who's currently on tour in the U.K. with James Bay, will perform "Ex's and Oh's" October 26 on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and is one of the acts who'll be featured on VH1's Best of 2015: You Oughta Know concert, airing live from New York on November 12. Next year, she'll hit the road with Vance Joy.
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