Critical Reception
"Hey Ya!" received universal acclaim from music critics. 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 Jazz & Pop list, a survey of several hundred music critics conducted by Robert Christgau, with 322 mentions, beating runner-up Beyoncé Knowles' "Crazy in Love" by 119. It was listed at number 15 on Blender's 2005 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born".
The song's unusual arrangement drew comparisons to artists from a variety of genres. Pitchfork Media referred to it as the apex of the album and added that it successfully mixed Flaming Lips-style instrumentation with the energy of Prince's 1983 single "Little Red Corvette". Subsequently, Pitchfork Media gave it the number two slot in its "The Top 100 Singles of 2000-2004" feature in January 2005, bested only by OutKast's own "B.O.B.". Blender described it as a mix of soul music by Ike Turner and New Wave music by Devo and later as an "electro/folk-rock/funk/power pop/hip-hop/neo-soul/kitchen sink rave-up". Rolling Stone compared André 3000's vocals to those of "an indie-rock Little Richard" and the backing arrangement to The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road, later including the song in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. New York also likened it to The Beatles and found it to be one of the best singles of 2003. Allmusic described it as an "incandescent" mix of electro, funk, and soul music. NME likened trying to classify the song as "akin to trying to lasso water" and described it as "a monumental barney between the Camberwick Green brass band, a cruise-ship cabaret act, a cartoon gospel choir and a sucker MC hiccuping 'Shake it like a polaroid pic-chaaaa!' backed up by the cast of an amateur production of The Wizard of Oz. Sort of." This song was number four on Rolling Stone's 2009 list of the 50 Best Songs of the Decade. In 2011, NME placed it at number 3 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".
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