In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing each single #1 single within the historical past of the Billboard Hot 100, beginning with the chart’s starting, in 1958, and dealing my means up into the current.
Look, I get it. I perceive. “Hey Ya!” is a type of pop songs that just about instantly transcended the cultural confines of the pop-song type. The track belongs to each style and to no style. In its heyday, “Hey Ya!” received performed on nearly each radio station, from R&B to alt-rock to grownup up to date. The single was a world-conqueror, and it represented the final word industrial triumph of one of many best, weirdest, most fearless rappers ever to do it, even when that rapper didn’t rap a single line on the monitor.
For these causes and others, “Hey Ya!” stands as one of many best unifying forces that pop music has given us this century. It’s a track that everybody is aware of, one which nearly everybody likes. “Hey Ya!” can be a track with concepts — about style, about melody, about relationships, about the entire concept of the pop track itself. Multiple generations regard “Hey Ya!” as an apex second for chart-pop, a degree the place all the pieces simply got here collectively. So I’m going to come back off as an asshole right here. It can’t be helped. If you’re right here to learn a treatise on the greatness of “Hey Ya!,” please look elsewhere. It shouldn’t be too troublesome.
“Hey Ya!” is okay. It’s fairly good, even. The track has hooks and vitality. It’s easy, and it’s sophisticated. It’s enjoyable to consider. But I’ve by no means been capable of finding a lot love for “Hey Ya!” in my coronary heart. Some of that’s pure sour-grapes bias. I cherished Outkast, and whereas “Hey Ya!” is the group’s greatest hit by far, it’s additionally an Outkast track in title solely. The insane, world-altering success of “Hey Ya!” made it functionally not possible for Outkast to proceed as a gaggle, although that practice would possibly’ve already left the station anyway. It’s a part of my job to evaluate the track that now we have, not the track that I wished. “Hey Ya!” makes that process troublesome for me. The track is so overwhelmingly not what I wished.
On high of that, I’ve all the time had an issue with the prevailing concept that “Hey Ya!” stands above the opposite pop music of its second. When André 3000, the extra stressed half of Outkast, went off on his personal and recorded his personal bugged-out experimental funk album, he would usually discuss in regards to the limiting nature of rap music because it existed within the early ’00s. But rap music was unimaginable within the early ’00s. The early ’00s, to my thoughts, stand out as a glittering golden period of Black American pop music. Virtually all the pieces on the radio had as a lot vitality, as many concepts, as “Hey Ya!” André had been an lively participant in that sport for years, and his vitality and concepts had made rap greater and brighter and deeper and higher. But when that golden period was at its top, André dramatically introduced his exit from the sport, and he was lavishly rewarded for leaving it behind. The complete factor has by no means sat proper with me.
In that very same sense, the important consensus surrounding “Hey Ya!” has by no means sat proper with me, both. Amidst this complete run of fantastic pop songs, the predominantly white important institution went into hosanna mode when André 3000 made a track that primarily flattered sure basic-ass concepts about white rock ‘n’ roll. Critics didn’t have to depart their consolation zones to embrace “Hey Ya!,” and the track grew to become a rallying level for each author who thought the New Pornographers ought to’ve been extra fashionable than Usher. None of that is the fault of “Hey Ya!” I’m simply saying: I’ve received some baggage with this motherfucking track. These columns are by no means goal — no evaluations are ever goal — however it is best to find out about that baggage earlier than we get into this factor.
A few years earlier than “Hey Ya!,” Outkast made historical past. They capped off a world-historical run of all-time basic rap albums by making their hottest report but. 2000’s Stankonia discovered André and Big Boi just a little extra frayed and stressed-out, however they had been nonetheless filled with ambition, nonetheless working towards a typical purpose. Outkast had already been vastly fashionable, however Stankonia took them to a unique degree. The album ultimately went quintuple platinum, and “Ms. Jackson,” a conflicted however heartfelt track about love and resentment and acceptance, grew to become Outkast’s first #1 hit on the Hot 100.
“Ms. Jackson” went to #1 at a time when rap songs that didn’t actively chase crossover-hit standing virtually by no means topped the pop charts. Outkast didn’t pull the pander-moves that had been frequent in that period, and so they succeeded anyway. In the method, they helped shift the steadiness inside rap. Just a few years later, the style’s middle moved to Outkast’s Atlanta hometown. But the success of Stankonia would possibly’ve additionally hastened Outkast’s breakup. Even as Stankonia was simply popping out, Big Boi and André 3000 had been discussing a loony-ass concept. The subsequent Outkast album, they might say, wouldn’t be an Outkast album in any respect. It could be two completely different solo albums, packaged collectively.
The recording business is structured in order that label bosses can discuss celebrity acts out of goofy-ass concepts like these two solo albums, however Outkast had sufficient energy that they may do what they wished. Big Boi and André had completely different concepts that they wished to discover, however they didn’t wish to break the group up simply but. When Outkast labored on their double LP Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the 2 members would step in and assist out on one another’s information, however there’s little or no cohesion between the 2 albums. André and Big Boi didn’t even trouble to give you a single title for the set. The album cowl was break up proper down the center, with each guys signaling that they had been saying various things. André and Big Boi weren’t at odds — they’ve by no means publicly been at odds — however they weren’t on the identical web page, both.
At this level, I don’t assume it’s particularly controversial to say that The Love Below, André’s half of the double Outkast album, is an absolute fucking mess. When he made The Love Below, André was primarily tired of rap, so he barely rapped. Instead, he went off and chased his goals of Prince/P-Funk-style polyglot artistry. On previous OutKast albums, André had been in a position to pull off one thing like that. Tracks like “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” and “Liberation,” from Outkast’s 1998 masterpiece Aquemini, aren’t actually rap songs; they’re deep funk explorations. But these are nonetheless Outkast songs, made with the counterbalancing affect of Big Boi, in addition to Erykah Badu and the group’s Dungeon Family friends. When André made The Love Below, he didn’t produce other voices to assist middle him, and that harm the report.
André 3000 has all the time been a wildly proficient rapper. I might’ve cherished to listen to him rap extra on The Love Below, however the lack of rapping isn’t actually the album’s drawback. The drawback is that André was all the best way up his personal ass, making tedious art-funk that by no means appeared to have any clear intention. George Clinton and Prince, André’s heroes, might get indulgent, too, however they had been all the time making an attempt to get individuals to transfer. When André got here out with a drum-‘n’-bass free-jazz model of “My Favorite Things,” he got here off like he simply wished individuals to inform him how intelligent he was. Before penning this column, I most likely hadn’t listened to The Love Below in 15 years, regardless of making an attempt very onerous to love the album when it was new. I hoped perhaps I’d unearth some hidden depths that I’d missed earlier than. Nope. Butt-ass report. Just a few enjoyable moments caught in a 78-minute swamp of undercooked soup.
“Hey Ya!” is without doubt one of the enjoyable moments. When the track first hit the web, the music-critic blogosphere — a really new factor on the time — thrashed round to seek out any type of comparability level. Did “Hey Ya!” sound just like the Flaming Lips? Little Richard? The Beatles? The Knack? Prince? Devo? There wasn’t any proper or fallacious reply. In completely different interviews, André would discuss loving the Smiths, or listening to the Ramones and the Buzzcocks whereas engaged on The Love Below. Years later, André advised Rolling Stone that he’d flown to New York simply to see the Hives, the Swedish garage-rockers who had been of their buzz-band interval on the time. André missed a lot of the present, however he cherished what he noticed: “I wouldn’t have written ‘Hey Ya!’ if it weren’t for the Hives.” (The Hives’ solely Hot 100 single, 2002’s “Hate To Say I Told You So,” peaked at #86.)
If you squint your ears, you’ll be able to hear traces off all these different artists in “Hey Ya!,” however the track doesn’t actually sound like every of them. “Hey Ya!” is all André. He wrote and produced the track himself, and he performed most of the devices. But there aren’t that many devices on “Hey Ya!” It feels like a rock ‘n’ roll track, however it’s virtually fully voice and keyboard, with some strummy acoustic guitar in there. André received assist from a couple of session musicians: keyboardist Kevin Kendrick, organist Marvin “Chanz” Parkman, backup singers Sleepy Brown and Myrna Crenshaw. André performed guitar and keyboards, programmed the drum machines, and sang the lead and a lot of the backup vocals. For each line on the track, André sang dozens of takes, usually working his voice by way of completely different filters.
At least in its first half, “Hey Ya!” goes over a few of the identical lyrical floor as “Ms. Jackson.” Nobody actually thinks of it this fashion, however “Hey Ya!,” on paper, is a track about feeling helpless to maintain a relationship collectively. André begins out singing that his child don’t fiddle, however he doesn’t know whether or not that’s out of affection or simply worry of being alone. He sings that his mother and father caught collectively however that “we don’t know how.” If nothing lasts eternally, then what makes love the exception? Why are we in denial after we know we’re not completely satisfied right here? But André by no means sings any of these questions straight-up. He retains interrupting himself, repeating sure phrases — “why oh why oh why oh” — till they lose all which means. Then André involves a realization — “Y’all don’t wanna hear me; you just wanna dance” — and the whole remainder of the track is simply party-time catchphrases.
You don’t want me to repeat the catchphrases, proper? You already know them. The Beyoncés and Lucy Lius, the Polaroid photos, what’s cooler than being cool, and so forth. The sheer nonsense of that a part of “Hey Ya!” must be enjoyable — André taking part in his personal hypeman, like some berserk mixture of James Brown’s Bobby Byrd and the B-52s’ Fred Schneider. I suppose it was enjoyable as soon as? I truthfully can’t bear in mind. “Hey Ya!” is a sufferer of radio’s tendency to overplay the shit out of some songs, and now I get irritated each time I hear that complete factor.
Part of the issue is the mere proven fact that André 3000 can’t sing. He would possibly’ve put tons of various filters on each vocal, however he nonetheless sings the entire track in a nasal honk. That issues. When it’s the height of the deregulated Clear Channel period and all these company radio stations are winnowing down their playlists to a couple songs that keep un uber-heavy rotation, it actually issues.
I suppose it’s attention-grabbing that “Hey Ya!” toys with the thought of exploring romantic love earlier than simply shrugging and hitting the dancefloor as an alternative. Maybe André was making a degree about meaningless pop music, proper all the way down to the track’s pure-gibberish title. Or perhaps André was simply chasing a sense — joyous frivolity within the face of uncertainty. Maybe André hid the track’s level too properly. Maybe he was pissed off when the Polaroid-picture bit grew to become the a part of “Hey Ya!” that everybody remembered.
A fast apart about that Polaroid-picture bit: At the 2004 Republican National Convention, first daughters Jenna and Barbara Bush quoted that “Hey Ya!” bit throughout their giggly speech, telling the world that their mother and father had been “actually kind of cool… When we tell them we’re going to see Outkast, they know it’s a band and not a bunch of misfits. And if we really beg them, they’ll even shake it like a Polaroid picture.” The current previous is so fucking embarrassing.
“Hey Ya!” appears to get a whole lot of bonus factors for refusing to sit down neatly inside anyone style. It’s attention-grabbing to listen to funky synth-bass within the context of what’s mainly a rock ‘n’ roll track — one which received performed on the identical indie dance nights because the Strokes and the White Stripes and all the opposite retro bands that had been being held up as potential saviors on the time. (I like most of these bands, however the concept that any of them had been as thrilling as Jay-Z or Missy Elliott or Lil Jon is even goofier on reflection.)
For me, although, the concepts aren’t sufficient. “Hey Ya!” is a enjoyable and energetic track, however it’s skinny and brittle, too. Maybe “Hey Ya!” seemed like a revelation at first. (Again, I truthfully don’t bear in mind.) But inside a couple of months — even a couple of weeks, truthfully — cultural saturation turned “Hey Ya!” into one thing oppressive and vaguely grating. I by no means exit of my option to hear “Hey Ya!” now. That track has nothing left to supply me.
But “Hey Ya!” was a phenomenon; there was no escape. At the iTunes music retailer, which launched two years earlier, “Hey Ya!” grew to become the primary monitor ever to promote one million one-dollar downloads. People had been shopping for the album, too. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below ultimately went platinum 11 occasions over. That quantity is just a little inflated, because the RIAA counts gross sales of double albums twice. But even for those who minimize that quantity in half, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is simply the biggest-selling album within the lengthy and proud historical past of Atlanta rap.
The “Hey Ya!” video was a giant a part of that phenomenon. It’s video. Bryan Barber, future director of Outkast’s Idlewild film, primarily restages the Beatles’ foundational Ed Sullivan look. This time, although, the invasion occurs in reverse, as a band of various Andrés performs to a mob of screaming women in London. (Ryan Phillippe, in between Igby Goes Down and one thing known as The I Inside, places on a pretend British accent to play the host.) André does an incredible job appearing out all these distinct characters within the band, investing all of them with attraction and persona. But I don’t know why Barber saved the screaming sounds going for the whole track; it makes the entire thing virtually unlistenable. For that motive, I’m including an embed of the “Hey Ya!” audio, with the intention to hear it with out the screaming.
Ever since “Hey Ya!,” André 3000 has gone into some model of retirement. Outkast will seem on this column once more, however André won’t. After “Hey Ya!,” the subsequent single was “Roses,” the one track on The Love Below to function Big Boi. The video riffed on motion pictures like Grease and on the thought of a rivalry between Big Boi and André. “Roses” cruised to #9 within the wake of “Hey Ya!,” however it didn’t get any greater. (It’s a 5.)
Even earlier than Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, André was making an attempt to transition into appearing, taking part in a bit half within the completely forgotten 2003 Harrison Ford/Josh Harnett buddy flick Hollywood Homicide. Over the subsequent few years, André popped up in supporting roles in a couple of motion pictures — Be Cool, Four Brothers, Revolver. André wasn’t taking part in leads, however in these scenes, he was virtually all the time probably the most well-known individual onscreen. He was a heat, partaking display presence, however his style in initiatives wasn’t nice. Those motion pictures are fairly dangerous. (Four Brothers has its moments.)
In 2006, Outkast received again collectively for the Depression-era musical Idlewild. I paid cash to see that film, and it fucking sucked. The film flopped, and so did its soundtrack album. That’s the final Outkast album, and it’s by far the least important. Idlewild limped its option to platinum, however “Mighty O,” its greatest hit, peaked at #77.
In the time since Idlewild, André has taken occasional appearing roles in random-ass motion pictures and TV exhibits: Charlotte’s Web, Semi-Pro, Jimi: All Is By My Side, High Life. He’s apparently in Noah Baumbach’s forthcoming White Noise; I’m wanting ahead to seeing that. But film stardom by no means occurred for André 3000. André hasn’t made any extra albums, both, although he’s sometimes toyed with the thought. In the late ’00s, André briefly caught the rap bug once more, making enjoyable appearances on remixes of tracks like Unk’s “Walk It Out” and Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s.” André additionally rapped on John Legend’s minor 2008 hit “Green Light.” (“Green Light” peaked at #24. John Legend will ultimately seem on this column.)
André appears to love dwelling a rootless existence, showing on different individuals’s songs on occasion however by no means making any of his personal. André’s rap verses aren’t all nice, however when he raps on somebody’s track, it nonetheless appears like an occasion. In the previous decade, André has popped up on tracks with a formidable array of collaborators: Beyoncé and Solange, Future and Travis Scott, N.E.R.D and a Tribe Called Quest, Kid Cudi and Vince Staples, James Blake and Anderson .Paak. As I write this, the very last thing that we’ve heard from André is the lengthy, crazy verse that he recorded for Kanye West’s 2021 monitor “Life Of The Party.” For causes too exhausting to get into right here, that monitor received left off of Kanye’s Donda album, however it made its means into the world anyway. André is nice on that track, and it’s yet another signal that he might return to rap full-time every time he needs. He doesn’t appear to need that, although.
Instead, André 3000 appears to be having fun with that Bill Murray existence, reworking himself into an city legend. You’ll hear tales about individuals seeing André wandering by way of a used bookstore, taking part in a saxophone with a parrot on his shoulder. (I made that up, however you couldn’t inform, might you?) André 3000 doesn’t owe the world something, and people “Hey Ya!” royalties have presumably made him wealthy sufficient that he’ll by no means should work once more for the remainder of his life. Good for him. I by no means want to listen to “Hey Ya!” once more, and perhaps André doesn’t, both.
GRADE: 6/10