75. Hey Ya! by OutKast

"Hey Ya!" by OutKast

Written by Andre Benjamin
Produced by Andre 3000
Released on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (September 23, 2003)
Released as single on September 9, 2003
Peaked at #1 on Billboard Hot 100
amazon spotify music video


This is the only OutKast song on my list. True OutKast fans should probably be offended by this. Heck, I'm a little mad at myself over this. They're an incredible duo. They were fun, introspective, and made some unbelievably great music. So many of their songs are probably on many people's imagined top 100 lists.

While OutKast will always be synonymous with Southern Rap, "Hey Ya!," and The Love Below half of the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album, didn't really fit into that categorization. "Hey Ya!" is a pop song. (It might just be a perfect pop song.)

"Hey Ya!" was literally everywhere in 2003-2004. It was played on almost every radio station. It was the #1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 for 9 straight weeks. Maybe it wasn't quite as big as "Old Town Road," but to help put it and OutKast into perspective, its reign at #1 was halted by another OutKast song: "I Like the Way You Move." That was the winter of OutKast. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below even managed to become the first hip hop album to win the Grammy for album of the year. Not that the Grammys mean anything. If you look back at the history of that award sometime, you'll find that they missed hard on that award throughout the 90s and 00s, but in 2004, the voters probably got it right. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is a cultural touchstone, and "Hey Ya!" plays a huge role in its enduring legacy.

"Hey Ya!" is still a great song, but now it's also a time machine. It will always take me back to that time in my life, just out of college, having fun, and trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything. I'm not sure any particular song defines a time so clearly for me. It was so present and tangible then, that I can't help but feel those years in its rhythms and hear those memories in its lyrics.

That time was right around when I did something that just about every man tries to do at least once in their life: try to learn the guitar. In 2003, I bought a guitar, learned a few chords, downloaded tabs, and put in a minimal effort into becoming a guitar player for about 3 years. I still have that guitar, but it mostly gathers dust now.

So of course it made sense to learn the chords for "Hey Ya!" It was a surprisingly simple song to learn. Apparently Andre 3000 was learning to play the guitar as they were producing Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, and he wrote "Hey Ya!" based on the first 4 chords he learned to play. It's a little tricky to play and sing because of the 2/4 bar that's inserted towards the end of the verse and some of the vocal rhythms in the second verse, but the chords and the lyrics were pretty easy. And ultimately it didn't matter if you screwed up the rhythm a little bit because the song was fun.

One of the best weddings I ever attended was right around this time. It was for one of my best friends from high school on the beach in beautiful northern Michigan. The groom was a musician, so the music at the reception was basically a jam session with a bunch of his musician friends from college. At one point I was prodded into grabbing the acoustic guitar and playing "Hey Ya!" for everyone. It was awesome. Everyone danced and sang along.

Afterwards, my friend's step-mom told me how much she enjoyed the song and how everyone seemed to be into it, even though she had never heard it before. What? How had she not heard "Hey Ya!?" Who could have possibly been alive at that point and not heard it somewhere? That was when I started to really see just how fractious and specialized tastes in music have become. Even a song that had turned into a seemingly unavoidable cultural phenomenon could be completely foreign to some not insignificant percentage of the population. (Also, for those wondering, I did play it at that wedding reception before the Scrubs episode existed, and I played it as a fun song, not as a sappy ballad like they did on the show.)

As I said, "Hey Ya!" is a time machine. I have so many memories tied up in those four minutes of pure pop brilliance. I'm grateful they're good memories and that it's a good song.

Right now, "Hey Ya!" by OutKast is (probably) my 75th favorite song of all time.