"Hey Ya!" is a song performed by American hip-hop duo Outkast, specifically group member André 3000, who wrote and produced the song. Along with "The Way You Move", recorded by Outkast's other member Big Boi, "Hey Ya!" was released by Arista Records as one of the two lead singles from the duo's fifth album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, on August 25, 2003. The track became a commercial success, reaching number one in the United States, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Sweden. "Hey Ya!" received critical acclaim upon release, and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest songs of the 2000s. Writing and recording André 3000 wrote "Hey Ya!" in 2000 and began work on recording it in December 2002 at Stankonia Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. He used an acoustic guitar for accompaniment, inspired by bands such as the Ramones, Buzzcocks, the Hives, and the Smiths. André recorded the introduction, the first verse, the hook, and the vocals around the same time, using several dozen takes. He returned to work on the song several evenings later, with session musician Kevin Kendricks performing the bassline on the synthesizer. Months later, André 3000 worked with Pete Novak at the Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles. They experimented with various sound effects, including singing through a vocoder, and did 30 to 40 takes for each line. Composition "Hey Ya!" is a song in G major. Each cadential six-measure phrase is constructed using a change of meter on the fourth measure (creating a song with 22 beats in each phrase) and uses a I–IV–V–VI chord progression. G major and C major chords are played for one and two measures, respectively. André 3000 then uses a deceptive cadence after a measure of the dominant D major chord, leading into two measures of an E major chord (against a G note in the melody implying E minor). The song moves at a tempo of 159 beats per minute, and André's vocal range spans more than an octave and a half, from B3 to G5. The song opens with three pick-up beats as André 3000 counts "one, two, three, oh" (with the "oh" on beat 1) and then leads into the first verse. The lyrics begin to describe the protagonist's concerns and doubts about a romantic relationship. He wonders if they are staying together just "for tradition", as in the lines "But does she really wanna