[mess around] / But can't stand to see me / Walk out the door?" André 3000 commented, "I think it's more important to be happy than to meet up to...the world's expectations of what a relationship should be. So this is a celebration of how men and women relate to each other in the 2000s". The song then leads into the chorus, which consists of the line "Hey ya!" repeated eight times, accompanied by a synthesizer performing the bassline. During the second verse, the protagonist gets cold feet and wonders what the purpose of continuing the relationship is, pondering the question, "If they say nothing is forever...then what makes love the exception?" After repeating the chorus, the song leads into a call and response section. André 3000 jokes, "What's cooler than being cool?", and the "fellas'" response, an overdubbed version of his vocals, is "Ice cold", a reference to one of André Benjamin's stage names. He then calls to the "ladies", whose response is overdubbed from vocals by Rabeka Tuinei, who was an assistant to the audio engineer. The song's breakdown coined the phrase "shake it like a Polaroid picture", a reference to a technique used by some photographers to expedite drying of damp instant film photos taken with film made by the Polaroid Corporation. Photos taken with early versions of the film needed to be dried, and shaking the picture helped it to dry faster. The breakdown also namechecks singer Beyoncé and actress Lucy Liu, in a turn of phrase alluding the song Independent Women Part I, which was performed by Destiny's Child for the 2000 film adaptation of Charlie's Angels, in which Liu starred. Though the line "now all Beyoncés and Lucy Lius" is meant to mean "now all the independent women", André 3000 says he included the lyric because the Independent Women Part I music video was playing on his tv as he wrote Hey Ya. The song closes by repeating the chorus and then gradually fading out. Critical reception "Hey Ya!" received universal acclaim from music critics and fans alike. PopMatters described the track as "brilliantly rousing" and "spazzy with electrifying multiplicity". Entertainment Weekly highlighted it as the catchiest song on the double album, and Stylus Magazine identified it as one of the best songs in OutKast's history. "Hey Ya!" topped the 2003 Pazz & Jop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by