Hey Ya! (2003)

"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".

Recording

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 Smiths and particularly The Hives, whom he said the song would not exist without having been inspired by seeing them perform live.

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.

Composition

"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 44 measures, respectively. André 3000 then uses a deceptive cadence after a 24 measure of the dominant D major chord, leading into two 44 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.