This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.

When “Hey Ya!” was released as a single, it achieved a kind of monumental status. The kind achieved only by a small few. A song so universally liked by fans of all genres, how could it be? Played everywhere. Proms. Weddings. Reunions. And every party under the sun. I remember in my own wedding, it was a must-have. We made the DJ play it, the only hip hop song that whole night.

It’s interesting to think about what makes a song achieve the kind of universal appeal that “Hey Ya!” achieved. It’s full of catchy moments. And in the case of “Hey Ya!”, there’s plenty to catch. The 1-2-3 count in the intro. The harmonizing in the chorus. The “alright, alright, alright” refrain. And then there’s the famous line that became a household phrase. Who can ever forget it?

“Shake it, shake it, shake it, sugar. Shake it like a Polaroid picture.”