Meet Layla Clark, the Percussionist Behind the Viral ‘Thunderstruck’ Clip

Layla Clark’s mother heard about the latest wave of attention from Layla herself. The Thomas Jefferson High School percussionist sent her a late-night message after realizing her “Thunderstruck” clip was spreading again.

The footage opens with Clark playing the AC/DC intro on mallet percussion during a football halftime show. The rest of the Jaguars come in after the pattern has had time to settle.

Clark told Axios Pittsburgh she had been playing for five years. The consistency of the opening gives viewers a small window into what those years of playing made possible.

She was 17 when interviewed about the clip. She talked about playing in a college marching band and about an interest in working with animals.

Clark also drew attention to her bandmates. Their entrance is a large part of why the short recording feels like a performance with a beginning and a payoff.

The video lets you hear the passage that put her in the spotlight. The full-band entrance lets you hear what she was preparing the audience for.

That late-night message makes more sense alongside the timeline. The performance was recorded the previous season. It found a new audience after Ronnie Evans shared the footage on X, Axios Pittsburgh reported. By then, the clip could reach people who knew the opening of “Thunderstruck” before they knew Clark’s name.

The attention arrived while Clark was still a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School. She described playing as something she enjoyed enough to lose herself in. That gives a little perspective on the video, which can make the passage look like nothing but speed until you watch how settled she is in the rhythm.

Clark’s plans give the story another dimension. She told Axios that Ohio State was her dream school and that she hoped to play in its marching band. She also said she was interested in becoming a veterinarian for exotic animals. Neither ambition fits neatly inside a short viral music clip.

Hear the electric-guitar phrasing in AC/DC’s recording and compare it with the short, distinct strikes in the halftime arrangement.

She was curious to see how far the video might travel, including whether it could reach AC/DC. That was a hope she described in the interview. Her actual collaborators in the clip are the other Jaguars, whose entrance makes the opening feel like part of something larger.

The two recordings make an interesting pair. The official version shows the guitar part Clark adapted. The halftime video shows what she could do with it in a setting she already knew well, playing for her school and working with a band she knew by sound.