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9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’

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On Sunday, the N.F.L., Roc Nation and Apple Music introduced that Usher will headline the 2024 Tremendous Bowl halftime present. Just one response will suffice: “Yeah!”

Such was the chorus heard all over the place in 2004, when the singer’s enthusiastically titled membership banger “Yeah!” topped the Billboard Scorching 100 for a whopping 12 weeks (solely to be dethroned by “Burn,” the subsequent single from his blockbuster album “Confessions”). Slick, strobe-lit and infectious, the smash featured a dexterous visitor verse from Ludacris and manufacturing and various yeah!s and OK!s from Lil Jon. “Yeah!” stays irresistible — and among the many most profitable homages to considered one of pop music’s trustiest syllables.

The phrase “yeah” — or, much more emphatically, “yeah!” — is so entwined with the historical past of contemporary pop that when the critic Bob Stanley printed a 2014 book charting “the story of pop music from Invoice Haley to Beyoncé,” he titled it “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Stanley was most likely referencing the precise yeah!s that punctuate the enduring refrain of the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” however the phrase additionally captures one thing quintessential concerning the exuberance of common music.

“Yeah” is slangier, extra irreverent and infrequently extra musical than “sure,” and it bypasses that pesky hissing sound, for one factor. “Yeah” can be youthful than its stuffier counterpart “yea” (as within the reverse of “nay”); its earliest quotation within the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1905 — not too lengthy earlier than the popularization of recorded music, by the way. “Yeah” is each query (“yeah?”) and reply (“yeah!”). “Yeah!” can be utilized in a tune as a car for each percussion and melody, a straightforward name for viewers participation or an ecstatic place holder for these moments when extra complicated language simply received’t suffice.

Am I suggesting that this superb phrase is worthy of its personal playlist? Oh, yeah!

With Usher, Lil Jon and Ludacris as my inspiration (and with all due respect to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), I’ve chosen to restrict right now’s playlist to songs with “yeah” within the title, and particularly songs that revolve in a roundabout way round that individual lyric. This nonetheless left me with an eclectic assortment to tug from, together with songs from Daft Punk, Blackpink, LCD Soundsystem and the Pogues.

Does this playlist additionally embody a sure zany theme tune from a sure Nineteen Eighties teen comedy about enjoying hooky and hanging out with Connor from “Succession”? I believe you already know the phrase I’d use to reply that query.

Listen along on Spotify while you read.

What van Gogh is to sunflowers, Lil Jon is to yeah!s. I can’t think about — and don’t even need to think about — this tune if he had not produced it and blessed it along with his gravelly, prodigious exclamations. (Listen on YouTube)

Maybe the best musical qualifier of “yeah”: “Oh.” Gently ups the ante however doesn’t take an excessive amount of consideration from our prized phrase. (That focus-seeking “ooooh” is one other story.) Daft Punk definitely is aware of tips on how to spin that titular chorus into mind-numbing bliss on this hypnotic, bassy observe from the duo’s 1997 debut, “Homework.” (Listen on YouTube)

5 yeahs in a tune title? These guys imply enterprise. This 1989 single finds the English rockers the Pogues at their most jubilant, main the best way towards a fist-pumping, shout-along refrain. It additionally includes a midsong saxophone solo, which is mainly the nonverbal sonic equal of “yeah!” (Listen on YouTube)

The phrase “child, yeaaaaahhhhh” comes to carry an virtually talismanic energy on this Pavement B-side (a private favourite), launched solely as a reside reduce on the deluxe reissue of the band’s 1992 debut album, “Slanted and Enchanted.” (Listen on YouTube)

A (very) darkly humorous duet between the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson that depends upon the stress created by their contrasting vocal kinds, “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” appeared on the group’s 1999 epic, “69 Love Songs.” (Listen on YouTube)

“Yeah” turns into a religious affirmation on this uplifting tune from the gospel singer Yolanda Adams’s 1999 album, “Mountain Excessive … Valley Low.” (Listen on YouTube)

“Yeah” additionally transcends language limitations, because the Okay-pop lady group Blackpink remind us on this observe from the 2022 album “Born Pink.” A lot of the lyrics are sung in Korean, however the quartet ship that catchy refrain within the common language of “yeah.” (Listen on YouTube)

An early exploration of pitch-shifted vocals, the Swiss digital group Yello’s absurdist “Oh Yeah” was used closely, and memorably, within the 1986 comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Yello’s Boris Clean as soon as recalled that the group’s vocalist Dieter Meier initially got here up with extra lyrics, however Clean instructed him that may make the tune “too difficult.” Stated Clean, “I had the concept of simply this man, a fats little monster sits there very relaxed and says, ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah.’” Positive! (Listen on YouTube)

Our grand finale is a nine-minute extravaganza of yeah (extravaganz-yeah?) from LCD Soundsystem. By the tip of this mesmerizing 2004 single, on which James Murphy and firm chant the titular phrase advert infinitum, “yeah” has transcended language, and perhaps even music itself, to turn into a way of thinking. (Listen on YouTube)

Yeah, yeah,

Lindsay


Listen on Spotify. We replace this playlist with every new e-newsletter.

“9 Songs That Will Make You Say ‘Yeah!’” observe listing
Observe 1: Usher that includes Lil Jon and Ludacris, “Yeah!”
Observe 2: Daft Punk, “Oh Yeah”
Observe 3: The Pogues, “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”
Observe 4: Pavement, “Child Yeah (Reside)”
Observe 5: The Magnetic Fields, “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!”
Observe 6: Yolanda Adams, “Yeah”
Observe 7: Blackpink, “Yeah Yeah Yeah”
Observe 8: Yello, “Oh Yeah”
Observe 9: LCD Soundsystem, “Yeah (Crass Model)”