Animals was released by Maroon 5 in 2014 as a single from their fifth studio album V. Written as a dark pop rock track about obsession, it became one of the band's best known songs of that era and reached the top ten in the United States. Its distinctive chorus and animal imagery made short excerpts easy to lift for edits online, where the hook is often paired with wild animals, intense characters or confident transformations, keeping the clip in circulation long after its chart run.