“Hey Ya!” is a song performed by American hip-hop duo Outkast, specifically group member Andre 3000, who wrote and produced the song. Along with “The Way You Move”, recorded by Outkast’s other member Big Boi, “Hey Ya!” was released by Arista Records as one of the two lead singless from the duo’s fifth album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, in August 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.
André 3000 wrote “Hey Ya!” in 2000, but 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, the 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 musicians Kevin Kendricks performing the bass line 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.
In 2011, NME placed it at number three on its list of the “150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years”. In 2013, the sports website Grantland.com named it the best song of the millennium after a March-Madness style bracket of 64 songs. The music video of the same name was likewise well received by critics, who regarded it as a contemporary piece of post-industrial performance art. In 2014, NME ranked the song at number 18 on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, and in 2021, Rolling Stone ranked the song at Number 10 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
In the video, André 3000 plays all eight members of the fictional band The Love Below: keyboardist Benjamin André, bassist Possum Aloysius Jenkins, vocalist André “Ice Cold” 3000, drummer Dookie Blossom Gain III, three backing vocalists the Love Haters, and guitarist Johnny Vulture. The video opens with the band’s manager Antwan (Big Boi) talking to Ice Cold and Dookie backstage. Meanwhile, the television presenter, portrayed by Ryan Phillippe. tries to calm a crowd of screaming girls on a show being broadcast live in black-and-white. Afterwards, he introduces the band and they start performing. While the girls in the audience scream loudly, one girl is carried off by security after rushing the stage, and another faints.
A family is shown dancing to the broadcast at home. When Ice Cold instructs listeners to “shake it like a Polaroid picture”, some of the girls begin taking pictures and shaking them. Ice Cold dances with one of the girls on stage, and the video closes with several friends of the band watching and discussing the performance.
