Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

An analysis of the meter of OutKast’s “Hey Ya!”

I originally posted something like this about a year ago. I noticed from my logs that about 45 people each month come here looking for my old analysis of the song, which has since been deleted because I changed blog software. Oops.

So, here it is, to the best of my memory:

If you try to count beats while listening to OutKast’s Hey Ya!, you’ll find it’s very tricky to stay on count, unless you know the secrets.

The first secret: When Andre 3000 starts counting, and he says “1-2-3 ugh”, you should count in your head “2-3-4-1″ to keep the emphasis on beats 2 and 4 instead of on 1 and 3.

The second secret: It’s got 4 beats per measure up until the fourth measure, which is only two beats. The fifth and sixth measures are also four beats.

So when you’re counting along with the song, you’ll never get lost if you count like this: “1-2-3-4-2-2-3-4-3-2-3-4-4-2-5-2-3-4-6-2-3-4.”

Here’s how it works with the lyrics of the first verse and chorus:

The first syllables in each measure appear in bold.

(rest)My baby don’t mess around, because she loves me so, and this I know fo sho_____

(rest)But does she really wanna, but can’t stand to see me walk out that door______

etc. etc. On every bolded syllable, you should say a measure number.

In the Chorus, the second Hey comes in the 4th measure.

Do you follow it now? It’s evidence of what makes these guys musical geniuses.