Here's something that might make you feel old: "Hey Ya!" came out a decade ago. "Hey Ya!" was released so long ago that Andre 3000 could reference polaroid pictures in his song and people generally said "oh yeah, I know what a polaroid picture is. I know you have to shake it."
Released on the double OutKast album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, "Hey Ya!" was a pretty massive hit (with nine weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100) at a time when music videos were running out of places to be seen with MTV playing more and more reality TV and the internet not quite ready for things like YouTube, Vimeo, and Vevo. Still, Andre 3000 managed to get produce a pretty fantastic music video.
So today, as you might have guessed, we're watching "Hey Ya!" by OutKast, directed by Bryan Barber.
In the video, Andre 3000 plays all of the members of a fictional band called "The Love Below" that includes, among others, a shirtless drummer named Dookie, a bassist named Possum Jenkins, and a trio called "The Love Haters" who are, of course, dressed up like color-coordinated horse jockeys.
They are playing on a 60s-era style TV show, and there are references abound to the Beatles February 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, starting with Ryan Phillippe's role in introducing the band in the same way the Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles before their performance. Well, Ed Sullivan didn't creep everyone out and didn't wear a Vaudeville hat, but there's a connection somewhere.
Other references to the performance include the crowd of screaming ladies and Dookie's caption reading "Yes Ladies, He's Still Single", a reference to the "Sorry Ladies, He's Married" caption on John Lennon during the Beatles' close ups. The question remains - would 1964 america have been ready for a trio of jockeys and a shirtless drummer with a crown? Maybe.
Would 1964 America be ready for a coffin as a live performance prop? I always forget that during this entire performance, there is a green shiny coffin right in the middle of the stage. It is never mentioned, never featured in a shot, and never ever glanced at. My best guess is that this is a reference to the underlying serious message of "Hey Ya!" which is embedded in all of the up-tempo music around it. At it's core, "Hey Ya!" is about questioning the idea of monogamy and monogamous love, but as Andre 3000 says in the middle of the song, "ya'll don't wanna hear me, you just want to dance." Indeed, 3000, indeed.
The story behind Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was that OutKast (a duo made up of Big Boi and Andre 3000) wanted to go different directions musically, so they just made a double CD with essentially two solo albums. It was a really interesting concept, and resulted in two critically-acclaimed albums. And yes, I did have a copy of the double album on vinyl, thanks for asking.
A result of this concept is that many of the promotional items contained promos for both individual albums. For example, "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move" were released as a double single and occupied the #1 and #2 spot on the Hot 100 for weeks. The videos for both albums follow the same pattern - they can be watched in any order, with the beginning and ends of each just flowing into each other (they were both directed by Bryan Barber). This is probably why you get the long, largely incoherent monologe by Big Boi at the beginning of "Hey Ya!".
I think one of the great testaments to this video is that Andre 3000 plays everyone on stage, and you never notice. It's incredibly smooth, and the reason for that is Andre 3000 puts on a magnetic performance as multiple people - a pretty amazing feat - matching the song's ridiculously poppy tempo. The effect could've turned out very differently:
