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6:51 · 1,198 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The chart record is the setup for the joke: nine weeks at number one, the first song ever to reach a million paid downloads on iTunes, and a Grammy for best urban performance.
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- It was also one of the first hip hop records widely played on adult contemporary radio, which is part of why so many listeners never examined what it says.
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- The album exists because OutKast split in two, each member making a solo record released together as a double LP under the band name.
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- The two halves are genuinely different records, one southern hip hop with Jay-Z and Ludacris, the other built on jazz, funk and sex.
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- The song was originally called Thank God for Mom and Dad, written during the previous album's sessions and only recorded in December 2002.
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- The reference points were The Ramones and The Smiths, with the groundwork laid on acoustic guitar and the words improvised over it.
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- On that album each track stands for a different woman, none of them autobiographical, which makes this one a scenario rather than a confession.
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- The argument inside it is about a relationship continued out of habit, set against a generation of divorce rates and an earlier one that stayed married for decades.
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- The harmony does the same work. Each phrase runs six measures over a one-four-five-six progression, and the five chord never resolves back to the one, which leaves the whole song hanging exactly as the relationship does.
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- The best evidence for the thesis is the song's own reception: it calls the audience out for dancing through a sad record, and the audience kept dancing.
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