“Hey Ya!” by Outkast

"Hey Ya!" came off Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Outkast's fifth album, and Arista released it on August 25, 2003 as the second single, paired with Big Boi's "The Way You Move". This one is all André 3000: he wrote it, produced it, sings lead and plays acoustic guitar and keyboards, with Kevin Kendrick adding more keys and Neal Pogue handling the mix.

It's a hip-hop act's idea of a garage-pop stomper, and it's irresistible: strummed guitar racing along at a gallop, handclap energy, André yelping and hollering like a one-man party, all of it so joyful it is nearly impossible to stand still. It mashes hip-hop, funk, soul and pop into one bright blur, and it refuses to sit still in any of them.

It went to number one in the US, Canada, Australia, Norway, Sweden and the Czech Republic, won the Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance in 2004 and was up for Record of the Year. Critics keep naming it among the best songs of the 2000s, and Rolling Stone put it at number 10 on its 2021 list of the greatest songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.