Programme notes
Outkast - Hey Ya! (Official HD Video)
Summary
A 2003 single that borrows the shape of sixties pop — handclaps, an acoustic strum, a shouted refrain — and sets it in an unusual metre that most listeners never notice. The video stages the group as a full band performing to a screaming television audience, with André 3000 playing every member.
The arrangement is bright to the point of relentless, which is deliberate: the lyric underneath it is about a relationship that both people know is finished.
Why it matters
It became one of the most inescapable records of its decade and a standard example of the trick where a miserable song is delivered as a celebration and the audience sings along regardless. It also marked the point where a Southern rap duo could top pop radio with something that was not, by any ordinary definition, a rap record.