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Hey Ya!
"Hey Ya!" is a song by American hip hop duo Outkast, performed by its member André 3000, who wrote and produced the song. Along with "The Way You Move", which was recorded by Outkast's other member Big Boi and featured Sleepy Brown, "Hey Ya!" was released by Arista Records as the second single from the duo's fifth album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, on August 25, 2003. The track became a commercial success, reaching number one in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Sweden. "Hey Ya!" received critical acclaim upon release, and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest songs of the 2000s. The song was ranked number 10 in Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
André 3000 wrote "Hey Ya!" in 2000 and began work on recording it in December 2002 at Stankonia Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. He used an acoustic guitar for accompaniment, inspired by bands such as the Ramones, Buzzcocks, the Hives, and the Smiths.
André recorded the introduction, the first verse, the hook, and the vocals around the same time, using several dozen takes. He returned to work on the song several evenings later, with session musician Kevin Kendricks performing the bassline on the synthesizer. Months later, André 3000 worked with Pete Novak at the Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles. They experimented with various sound effects, including singing through a vocoder, and did 30 to 40 takes for each line.
"Hey Ya!" is a song in G major. Each cadential six-measure phrase is constructed using a change of meter on the fourth measure (creating a song with 22 quarter note beats per phrase) and uses a I–IV–V–VI chord progression. G major and C major chords are played for one and two 4
4 measures, respectively. André 3000 then uses a deceptive cadence after a 2
4 measure of the dominant D major chord, leading into two 4
4 measures of an E major chord (against a G note in the melody implying E minor). The song moves at a tempo of 159 beats per minute, and André's vocal range spans more than an octave and a half, from B3 to G5.
The song opens with three pick-up beats as André 3000 counts "one, two, three, oh" (with the "oh" on beat 1) and then leads into the first verse. The lyrics begin to describe the protagonist's concerns and doubts about a romantic relationship. He wonders if they are staying together just "for tradition", as in the lines "But does she really wanna [mess around] / But can't stand to see me / Walk out the door?" André 3000 commented, "I think it's more important to be happy than to meet up to...the world's expectations of what a relationship should be. So this is a celebration of how men and women relate to each other in the 2000s". The song then leads into the chorus, which consists of the line "Hey ya!" repeated eight times, accompanied by a synthesizer performing the bassline.
During the second verse, the protagonist gets cold feet and wonders what the purpose of continuing the relationship is, pondering the question, "If they say nothing is forever...then what makes love the exception?" After repeating the chorus, the song leads into a call and response section. André 3000 jokes, "What's cooler than being cool?", and the "fellas'" response, an overdubbed version of his vocals, is "Ice cold", a reference to one of André Benjamin's stage names. He then calls to the "ladies", whose response is overdubbed from vocals by Rabeka Tuinei, who was an assistant to the audio engineer.
The song's breakdown coined the phrase "shake it like a Polaroid picture", a reference to a technique used by some photographers to expedite drying of damp instant film photos taken with film made by the Polaroid Corporation. It is an ongoing urban myth that shaking photos taken by the instant camera makes them dry faster. The breakdown also namechecks singer Beyoncé and actress Lucy Liu, in a turn of phrase alluding to the song "Independent Women Part I", which was performed by Destiny's Child for the 2000 film adaptation of Charlie's Angels, in which Liu starred. Though the line "now all Beyoncés and Lucy Lius" is meant to mean "now all the independent women", André 3000 says he included the lyric because the music video for "Independent Women Part I" was playing on his TV as he wrote "Hey Ya!". The song closes by repeating the chorus and then gradually fading out.
"Hey Ya!" received widespread acclaim from music critics. PopMatters described the track as "brilliantly rousing" and "spazzy with electrifying multiplicity". Entertainment Weekly highlighted it as the catchiest song on the double album, and Stylus Magazine identified it as one of the best songs in OutKast's history. "Hey Ya!" topped the 2003 Pazz & Jop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau, with 322 mentions, beating runner-up Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love" by 119. It was listed at number 15 on Blender's 2005 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born", and Pitchfork included it in its collection of The Pitchfork 500.
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Hey Ya!
"Hey Ya!" is a song by American hip hop duo Outkast, performed by its member André 3000, who wrote and produced the song. Along with "The Way You Move", which was recorded by Outkast's other member Big Boi and featured Sleepy Brown, "Hey Ya!" was released by Arista Records as the second single from the duo's fifth album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, on August 25, 2003. The track became a commercial success, reaching number one in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Sweden. "Hey Ya!" received critical acclaim upon release, and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest songs of the 2000s. The song was ranked number 10 in Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
André 3000 wrote "Hey Ya!" in 2000 and began work on recording it in December 2002 at Stankonia Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. He used an acoustic guitar for accompaniment, inspired by bands such as the Ramones, Buzzcocks, the Hives, and the Smiths.
André recorded the introduction, the first verse, the hook, and the vocals around the same time, using several dozen takes. He returned to work on the song several evenings later, with session musician Kevin Kendricks performing the bassline on the synthesizer. Months later, André 3000 worked with Pete Novak at the Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles. They experimented with various sound effects, including singing through a vocoder, and did 30 to 40 takes for each line.
"Hey Ya!" is a song in G major. Each cadential six-measure phrase is constructed using a change of meter on the fourth measure (creating a song with 22 quarter note beats per phrase) and uses a I–IV–V–VI chord progression. G major and C major chords are played for one and two 4
4 measures, respectively. André 3000 then uses a deceptive cadence after a 2
4 measure of the dominant D major chord, leading into two 4
4 measures of an E major chord (against a G note in the melody implying E minor). The song moves at a tempo of 159 beats per minute, and André's vocal range spans more than an octave and a half, from B3 to G5.
The song opens with three pick-up beats as André 3000 counts "one, two, three, oh" (with the "oh" on beat 1) and then leads into the first verse. The lyrics begin to describe the protagonist's concerns and doubts about a romantic relationship. He wonders if they are staying together just "for tradition", as in the lines "But does she really wanna [mess around] / But can't stand to see me / Walk out the door?" André 3000 commented, "I think it's more important to be happy than to meet up to...the world's expectations of what a relationship should be. So this is a celebration of how men and women relate to each other in the 2000s". The song then leads into the chorus, which consists of the line "Hey ya!" repeated eight times, accompanied by a synthesizer performing the bassline.
During the second verse, the protagonist gets cold feet and wonders what the purpose of continuing the relationship is, pondering the question, "If they say nothing is forever...then what makes love the exception?" After repeating the chorus, the song leads into a call and response section. André 3000 jokes, "What's cooler than being cool?", and the "fellas'" response, an overdubbed version of his vocals, is "Ice cold", a reference to one of André Benjamin's stage names. He then calls to the "ladies", whose response is overdubbed from vocals by Rabeka Tuinei, who was an assistant to the audio engineer.
The song's breakdown coined the phrase "shake it like a Polaroid picture", a reference to a technique used by some photographers to expedite drying of damp instant film photos taken with film made by the Polaroid Corporation. It is an ongoing urban myth that shaking photos taken by the instant camera makes them dry faster. The breakdown also namechecks singer Beyoncé and actress Lucy Liu, in a turn of phrase alluding to the song "Independent Women Part I", which was performed by Destiny's Child for the 2000 film adaptation of Charlie's Angels, in which Liu starred. Though the line "now all Beyoncés and Lucy Lius" is meant to mean "now all the independent women", André 3000 says he included the lyric because the music video for "Independent Women Part I" was playing on his TV as he wrote "Hey Ya!". The song closes by repeating the chorus and then gradually fading out.
"Hey Ya!" received widespread acclaim from music critics. PopMatters described the track as "brilliantly rousing" and "spazzy with electrifying multiplicity". Entertainment Weekly highlighted it as the catchiest song on the double album, and Stylus Magazine identified it as one of the best songs in OutKast's history. "Hey Ya!" topped the 2003 Pazz & Jop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau, with 322 mentions, beating runner-up Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love" by 119. It was listed at number 15 on Blender's 2005 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born", and Pitchfork included it in its collection of The Pitchfork 500.