The words “shake it like a Polaroid picture” were everywhere in 2003 when Outkast’s anthem Hey Ya! took off and for good reason, the song is an incredible bop with other lines like “lend me some sugar, I am your neighbour!”
The song sounds huge, despite only having one male and one female voice contributing thanks to the final mix layering both the voices and it spent 25 weeks in the top 100 UK Charts following release.
However, this catchy tune with an equally catchy name was almost named something entirely different.
What Hey Ya! was almost called
Although the band described the track as “the saddest song ever written” on X (formerly Twitter) back in 2021, at the time it just felt like a great song to dance to, something that was actually pre-empted by the lyric “y’all don’t wanna hear me, you just wanna dance.”
However, if the name of the song had been a little less catchy, maybe we’d have taken the hint.
According to Rolling Stone Australia: “At one point it was called “Thank God for Mom and Dad,” a title that makes plain its complicated lyrics about the challenges of keeping a romantic relationship afloat.”
Thank God For Mom And Dad of course being a reference to the line: “Thank God for mom and dad for sticking through together ’cuz we don’t know how.”
Speaking to HuffPost UK back in 2013, André 3000 said: “The song isn’t autobiographical, it’s more like fantasies or tangents based on real life.
“Moments from my life spark a thought when I’m writing. The story was set in the 50’s, so the song was me trying do a Woody Allen kinda thing, a humorous kind of honesty.”
As for that iconic video? It was based on The Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, when the group came to America and created a frenzy. During that show, the audience was made up of screaming girls, excited to see the foursome live.