Shake it like a Polaroid picture!!!

"This is my happy song," my cousin Tim turned to me and said as I did about as much getting down as is possible for a bundled up white boy constrained to a seat in a freezing Soldier Field.

"It's probably everyone's happy song right now," I responded like a jerk on the subject of Outkast's "Hey Ya!"

Even though the song has become love-it-or-tired-of-it party driving vernacular and Tim Martens' official Happy Song, I've been wondering about how really happy the song is. Somewhere between the body moving hand claps and peppy guitar strumming and the get-unmoving-bodies-moving call and response, there's real despair in the song. The lyrics, about the seeming impossibility of love being able to hold two people together for long, tends to show that. Even if we aren't paying attention to (or making out) the lyrics the first hundred thousand times, the song still reaks of a melancholy darkness. Just listen to the wilting delivery of the title phrase, or the eerie lonely echoes of the chorus chimes and Andre's calls.

But it's a song that overwhelming makes us feel happy. Do we find joy in this celebration of our mortality? Do we just ignore the song's mood of impending disaster so that we can clap along? What does either say about our relationship with music as it relates to ourselves?

Is it even worth thinking about or should I shut up and dance? Hey ya!