Music Video Analysis

Outkast - Hey Ya!


Genre Characteristics:
Hip-hop - connotes modern music, rap, influences of other music including soul, jazz, rock and blues.

Relationship between lyrics and visuals:
Some lines relate to the actions such as "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" but theres no real narrative as its done like a real performance. Some lines are directed at an audience, which fits with the video as there is an audience. Eg:

"Hey, alright now
Alright now fellas, (YEAH!)
Now what's cooler than bein' cool?

Relationship between music and visuals:
The band and audience dance and clap in time to the music and movement stops when the music pauses.

Close-ups of the artist and star image motifs:
The video mocks the star image with the exaggerated screaming girls and the drummer wearing a crown and no shirt plays on the stereotype of rock stars.
The album title 'The Love Below' is printed onto the drums.

Reference to the notion of looking:
We see the performance through on black and white camera screens. The audience is layered, with the audience in the video, the audience watching at home and us, the real viewers.

Intertextual References:
The video is based on the Beatles' landmark performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, though it is set in London..

The performance is mostly concept based with the concept of performing it like it was a performance on a TV show. It is also performance based: Andre 3000 plays the eight band members and the audience also play a part with one girl running onto stage and another fainting. Theres no real narrative.

The Polaroid Coorporation used the well-known line 'Shake it like a Polaroid picture' to rejuvenate their brand and the public's perception of it being old-fashioned as the song by a modern band made it seem more fashionable.

The dialogue at the beginning of the video helps build up towards the actual performance like it would on a real TV show. It also gets the duo's other member, Big Boi into the video as he doesn't actually perform in it.