I despise this song, although I have never heard any part of it for more than 30 seconds. The only reason I ever heard that much was in flipping past the channels, I occassionally catch the video. (Must be VH1, they play music videos sometimes I hear.) One almost can’t help but stop in slacked jawed wonder at the spectical it presents. Men is silky green shirts dancing badly. 3 men wearing jockey hats whose big dance move is to wiggle their fingers. Jockey hats? It’s like watching a train filled with singing bass fish derail and spill bad taste into your house.
It has a simplistic groove that can easily bury itself into your head and devour your brain turning you into some horrid pop music loving zombie. Those who fall victim to it are reduced to posting on message boards and repeating the lyrics in the hope of creating more living dead like themselves.
Why must zombies always feel the need to create more zombies? Can’t they just eat our brains and let us lie in peace?
I will now, point by point, refute your reasons for liking this song:
"It’s stuck in my head, and I don’t mind." This does not make it a “great” song. This makes it a “catchy” song. I concede its catchiness, because it is stuck in my head now. You bunch of craven bastards.
"Didn’t you notice? EVERYONE in the video is Andre3000!" Wait, it was everyone? Even the guys in jockey hats? That’s actually kind of SHUT THE FUCK UP I DON’T CARE. The video is not the song, and since MTV only plays videos during TRL, we won’t ever see the video after about March. Besides, Aphex Twin did it first, and better.
"This is so innovative! Don’t you hear the acoustic guitar in the background?" Doesn’t HE hear it? Clearly not, since he’s singing in some other key during the – I use the word loosely – “verse.”
"Some decades hence, ‘Hey Ya’ is going to be listed among the all time greatest Pop music, right up there with ‘Satisfaction’,"
I presume you mean the Britney Spears cover.
"… ‘Stairway to Heaven’,"
Right, right. You mean the reggae version William Shatner did?
"and ‘Hey Jude’."
You mean Dogstar’s “Hey Dude”, right?
I’ll assume I’m being whooshed here. Otherwise, there is a special circle of hell just for people who proclaim the latest steaming tripe to be “immortal”. It’s overplayed pop, and it sucks, and it will be remembered in the same breath as MC Hammer, Sean “P. (“Puffed Diddy”) Daddy” Combs, and N’Sync.
5)But they’ve got "harmonic complexity, melodic interest and rhythmic complexity."
And you’ve got a Perl script that combines an adjective with a noun. Do you want a cookie? “Rhythmic Complexity” is Dave Grohl’s fills or John Bonham drumming on “Four Sticks”. “Harmonic complexity” is the Hammond organ on Led Zeppelin’s “That’s the Way”. “Melodic interest” is when a melody is interesting, like in “Paranoid Android” or the bridge of Van Halen’s “Panama” - not when it’s a ditty. Or is that spelled “Diddy”? (To be fair: I haven’t heard the rest of the album. But if this is their flagship hit, then I guess I’m never going to discover how awesome Outkast can be.)
This is an amazing song from an amazingly talented artist! No, this is a pop ditty - barely a jingle - from an artist who may or may not have talents that extend beyond the mix machine. The singing is mediocre and off-key. The beats are catchy, but otherwise artificial.
But it’s so mother-[expurgated], [unprintable] CATCHY!
I can’t believe you keep falling back on such a lame
HEEEEEEEEEEEEEY YA!
HEEEEY YA!
AlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlrightAlright!
…dammit.
Now, now Jurph. You should know you cannot refute anybody’s reason for liking a song-- any song and for any reason.
Are you saying that people don’t actual like the song and are lying about their reasons? Of course not. What I think you are saying is that you don’t like the song, and these are the reason why.
Can I, a person who likes Hey Ya! refute your reasons? Of course not. They are your own personal opinions and I would never assume to tell you how you feel or should feel about a particular piece of music.
I’m dead serious. If you don’t like this song, too fucking bad. This one’s here to stay. It’ll stay in relative heavy rotation on both mainstream and the less-esoteric alternative circuits, and by then it will dominate the classic stations.
My kids will know this song.
It ain’t Beethoven’s 9th, but it’s as good or better than anything to come out of popular music in the last 40 years.
The mere thought of this made me shudder…then laugh…the shudder some more. I agree that this song is nothing more than a catchy pop song that will be overplayed and out of our lives very, very shortly. Throwaway pop at its worst.
I know it’s not cool to like something that’s mainstream, but just because something is mainstream doesn’t mean it’s bad, or didn’t take talent to create. I am even able to acknowledge talent in types of music I don’t even like, like country.
Outkast is nothing like N’Sync. Not the same. At all.
I also just wanted to say, this song has now been in my head for over 8 hours.
Actually, it does. The first time I heard the song was when watching the Peanuts video, and the first verse didn’t impress me either. Rap is not generally my cup of tea. But to Outkast’s credit, the song never stagnates; the vocal and musical patterns change from verse to verse and keep it going like weather in Michigan. If you don’t like what it’s doing right now, just wait a moment.
I’ve played it three or four times this afternoon, it’s definitely grown on me.
It plays almost every hour here on our one pop stations. When my son was up visiting over the holidays, he was astounded to hear the so-called top pop songs played so often. Apparently they don’t do that in California. Anyway, I love to shakeit-comeonandshakeit-shake it like a polaroid pic-cha! I must get up and give it my best bum rattle. and I like Who Let the Dogs out, too.
Ah, yes. Because as everyone knows, “the rest of rap music” is utterly bereft of harmonic complexity, melodic interest, or rhythmic complexity.
Please. This is like the snobs who say, “I hate country music becuse it’s all about ‘I lost my truck and my dog’”; all they demonstrate is that they’ve never actually heard country music.
…Oh yeah, and that Outkast song is fabulous; if the OP is sick of the song, he should direct his complaints to the evil captors who are preventing him from turning off the fucking radio.
for your own sake CLICK! The 100k setting has distortion on my machine
For those first time listeners what do you think?
And if it was your first time seeing the video, what can ya say? Keep in mind everyone in it is Andre3000, even the girls… Brilliant!
This is a double album that you can play all the way through over and over. This is when we get to use the word masterpeice people. Personally, Hey Ya isn’t even really a fav. from the album but it is the obvious hit/rump shaker. Most peole that don’t like the song seem to have formed that opnion from hearing it too much on the radio. Turn that pop staion off, it will ruin ya!