Hey yaddah yaddah yaddah

You know, it doesn't matter how good or genre busting a song is, overexposure is overexposure. Despite the fact that it did indeed make my top 20 songs list (and pretty much every top singles list of '03, indie or not), I'm finding myself getting evermore tired of the song. Hey, yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

When you start getting cheap flash animations featuring lame rhymes and crap Weird-Al inspired parody using Saddam Hussein or taking Charlie Brown animation and adding it to the song, or even the inevitable cover versions (already)... well, if songs could jump the shark, Outkast's Hey Ya would certainly have done it by now.

It's being used in trailers for Adam Sandler comedies, it's getting an abundant amount of airplay on Muchmusic, and it's on mainstream radio hooking more and more people with it's catchy handclaps, which only perpetuates the song as suburbanite club hoppers blast the song in their Miata's and Lexus'.

Besically, yeah, I'm sick of the song... the more I hear it, the more frustrated I get with it. I don't know if it's just my "indie sensibilities" and distrust of the masses. People have a tendency for liking things without ever taking the time to understand why they like it. Not that I'm saying you have to analyze life to death, but I think it's important to know what it is you like about something. But some people see music as a disposable commodity (and it's not just consumers but the record companies and radio stations et. al). But I guess that's what it's become. If you buy a painting for your wall, does it become any less fresh if you stare at it every day? Well, perhaps you just ignore it, occasionally staring deeply at the textures and details, remembering why you bought it and admired it so. But mostly the picture's just background, wall noise. Music can be like that, but for some reason, an indie-head like myself has trouble ignoring music for the most part, especially bad music. But bad music, like bad art, draws attention to itself, whereas mediocre music/art just sort of lingers.

But "Hey, Ya" is neither bad nor mediocre. It's a catchy, boundary-bending song, but it just doesn't seem to have the stamina to withstand listener bombardment. It's what music, even good music has come to: disposable, ultimately unforgettable. I don't think it matters how many parodies or covers of this song there are, in fact I think these imitations only serve to hurt the longevity of the song. These replicas trivialize the work, destroy its uniqueness, for what? Kitsch's sake. Argh, damn you, the internet, damn you!

The song, though, just wont have any lasting power. I don't think any song these days can really have the lasting power that music once had, more specifically I don't think any song could withstand the multi-media bombardment that music these days face. Even fucking a Mozart couldn't withstand corporate pushes and consumer demand.

Yeah, sure, "Hey, Ya" may wind up on the K*Tel best of '00 compilation in 7 years. I can see the the "OUTKAST/hey,ya" highlighted in yellow amidst the white text, stuck between "COLDPLAY/yellow" and "BRITNEY SPEARS/hit me baby one more time" scrolling over a picture of the Speakerboxx cover in the background with an audio clip of the song "Shake it, shake it, shake, shake shake it, shake it like a polaroid picture" before segwaying into the next overhyped and overplayed arbitrary pseudo-jazz song from the summer of '06.
Yet another one-hit wonder.
But that's just it, Outkast aren't one-hit wonders (can there even be one-hit wonders in these days of corporate driven musicians?). They're hip-hop innovators, with each album pushing the limits of their music genre. They've had other chart toppers, but nothing of this stature. Not many artists have a song of this stature... but the question left I guess is can Outcast survive the attention. With it help them or hinder them.

You know, I've always hated when this happens, when an artist or song I like gets overplayed. I hate it when something I enjoy becomes something I detest.
Grr.