[ul]
[li]The phrase “Hey la” (with an L) seems to have been first used in lyrics in “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels in 1963.[/li][li]Dire Straits quoted a line from that song in “Romeo and Juliet”: “Hey la my boyfriend’s back.”[/li][li]Amy Ray covered that Dire Straits song with Indigo Girls (which is how I first heard it) and recently wrote the Indigo Girls song “Share the Moon” which goes “Hey la la” in the chorus.[/li][/ul]
I always thought it was an odd-sounding interjection. It’s never used outside a few song lyrics. Perhaps it borrows the French word là ‘there’ so that the phrase could be interpreted as ‘hey there’. Or perhaps not.
Pretty sure the OP is describing Eric Clapton’s hit “Hey Lah”.
Hey, lah. You’ve got me on my knees.
Hey, lah. I’m begging, darling please.
Hey, yah, ;), the older I get, the quicker the decades pass by! And the chorus is so reflectively sweet that the shaking Polaroid thing just didn’t register at all.
Just FYI for anyone who didn’t read post #4: Troppos got it in the second post, but waaaay within my 15 minute excited attention span. WTG!!!
It is Outcast’s “Hey Ya” (not lah) and I LOVE the Obadiah Parker cover… thanks for that link and bonus discussion about a song that I totally missed the first time around.
Shake shake a shaka,
LH
Another unusual cover, this one by a well-known singer: Alanis Morissette singing “My Humps”.
Let’s keep playing! Carly Rae Jepson/Jimmy Fallon/Roots cover of Call Me Maybe with kindergarten instruments, and of course the Falon/Timberlake history of rap series.Part I. And Part II (Hey Ya’s in here)
Hermione,
Cute! And very clever. Thanks for that “Peanuts version” link!
Troppus: Link 3 is great! By all means, keep playing!
Um, I’m pretty sure that would be “Layla,” not “Hey lah.”
Yay! Okay, give me your era/music genre preference. If you are old enough to know the Doors, the Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots) cover of Break On Through might give you pause. Or maybe Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder cover of Roadhouse Blues might interest you.
Or maybe SNL’s spoof of Eminem and Lil’ Wayne’s (heavily edited) Valentine’s Day song might be your thang: Stream TV and Movies Live and Online | Hulu
Or a smoove Lumineer’s rap cover: The Lumineers - "Ho Hey" Rap Cover - Prince Aki ft. Kaleb Wachala - YouTube
Or prove you have a sense of humor and listen to Hayseed Dixie (yeah, that’s right AC/DC and asst 70’s and 80’s rock retooled for bluegrass) and try out a cover of Ace of Spades. (This ain’t for lightweights)
That is AWESOME!
Back when the song came out and the SDMB was full of Hey Ya h8erz I hadn’t heard it, but trusted everybody’s judgement and assumed it was awful.
Then I heard it.
It is amazingly stooopid (three "O"s worth of stooopid), and stupidity is part of the foundation of Rock & Roll. It’s loud enough to wake the dead, even at low volumes, inherent and unavoidable loudness being another element of the foundation. And that guy uses a real little Casio keyboard! It has a great beat and it’s easy to dance to. I give it a 15, Dick.
It may be the greatest song of this century, if not EVAH!
One of the best covers ever:
The Gourds-“Gin and Juice”
I agree it sort of sounds like Layla but Hey Lah makes a lot more sense in the context of the song narrative.
“Oops…I did it again” - by Richard Thompson and by German singer Max Raabe und Palast Orchester.
Max Raabe is…different. 
If you dare check out his covers of Tainted Love and We Will Rock You.
The Lumineers - Stubborn Love?
The lyrics are actually:
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
but the way he sings it sounds
Haaaaay-uh…laaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ah
Don’t Dream It’s Over as sung by Nadeen(Cheri Oteri)
Hey, nah. Heyyy, nah. Don’t dream it’s over
The title of the song is “Layla.”
The published lyric says “Layla.”
I’m not sure what you think the “context of the song narrative” to be, but it’s obviously different than what Eric Clapton thought when he wrote it.
According to this Wikipedia article(and numerous other sources I’ve seen), Clapton wrote the song out of unrequited love for the wife of his friend, George Harrison. Using “Layla,” a girl’s name, makes sense in that context. “Hey Lah” is basically a meaningless phrase used in some songs as a rhyme. It really makes no sense in any context.
Clapton’s “Layla” was named after the 12th-century Persian Sufi poem Layla and Majnun by Nizami Ganjavi, a tale of pining after unrequitable love. Clapton had been reading it while wishing he could get Pattie away from George. *Laylá *means ‘woman of night’ in Arabic. *Majnūn *means ‘crazy’.
jnglmassiv was pretty obviously joking.
Hey laah, hey lah lah, sing this corrosion to me? 
This board really needs closed captioning for the humor impaired.