Leena Ojala: Outkast's "Hey Ya!"

​This brilliant cover of Outcast's Hay Ya by Leena Ojala.
 
"Hey Ya was the first track I ever did a cover on when I started playing the guitar at 16. I played a solo acoustic cover of it in my gigs - it always went down well as it's uptempo, dynamic and has a nice melody.

Working with Benbrick on the cover, we went for a completely different sound and feel, keeping it uptempo but changing the emotion from happy to that of dreamy / reminiscing the past. In the initial choruses I try to reach out timidly, only hoping but not expecting to be heard, whereas in the final chorus I placed myself on a mountain top imagining to reach out once more with all my heart.

We kept the intro different from the original so that you need to get 45 seconds into the song before you recognise the track. I added an original vocal hook for the intro which I feel works nicely. All throughout the track we placed my vocals at the top."