At the moment, my hands-down favorite song is YIPPEE KI YAY, which is a hard-drivin’ sound explosion about living a more selfless life, giving more, loving more, and finding peace by putting the spotlight on others instead of yourself. In spite of the peaceful message in this song, the name of the song and the chorus line were both inspired by the 1988 action thriller movie, Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis.
The idea for Yippee Ki Yay came from a deep yearning inside of me to create a really hard-rockin’ hard-drivin’ guitar riff and song that would resonate deep into the soul of the listener. And laced into this heavy metal song would be a message of peace and love, which is what most of my songs are about. So one day, I walked into the control room and said to the “Magic Man,” “I am ready to write and create a heavy metal masterpiece.” The Magic Man looked at me and said, “Let’s do it!” I sat down, shared my idea for the opening guitar riff, which would be a fast tempo eight count opener and each syllable in my chorus line would land hard on each note. The song would smack of early ‘70s heavy metal stadium anthems and the lyrics would be so catchy you couldn’t help but “scream” along.
The Magic Man pulled out of our guitar line up, a ‘60s style Fender Stratocaster and began searching for the sequence of notes to match the riff I could hear in my head. At first, there was way too much movement in what he was playing. So I said, “Just play a very hypnotic yet heavy riff with just a few basic chords and I hummed the notes I was hearing. After five tries he nailed the exact sequence and sound I had in my head and we recorded that riff immediately. When you hear the chorus line in the song, you will see how the words, “Go ahead, makin’ their day,” match the guitar riff perfectly, and so does, “All your love, give it away.”
Interesting to note, when I originally started working on this project, I had a different song in mind that was titled, Keep on Truckin’. Once me and the Magic Man had created and recorded the riff for the song, I tried every way possible to fit the chorus line of Keep on Truckin’ into the riff. After two days, I gave up trying to write and rewriting my Keep on Truckin’ song to make it work with the phenomenal riff we had created. A bit frustrated, I went to bed that night and slept like a baby until I awakened at 3:00 a.m. with my new guitar riff rolling around in my head. I kept hearing it over and over and on the final sequence of the riff, I heard the words yippee ki yay. In other words, I kept hearing, da, da, da…yippee ki yay, da, da, da…yippee ki yay.
Around the same time I had written Keep on Truckin’, I had also written a song called Yippee Ki Yay. Keep on Truckin’ is a song about perseverance and positive thinkin’. As stated previously, Yippee Ki Yay is a song about giving, kindness, and getting away from a selfie lifestyle. When I arrived at the work the following morning after I kept hearing da, da, da…yippee ki yay in my head all night, I pulled up the lyrics to Yippee Ki Yay and tried to sing the chorus into the riff—and it fit like a glove! I ran into the Control Room and told the Magic Man the riff is the same but the song has changed from Keep on Truckin’ to Yippee Ki Yay! He then went to work on creating a basic arrangement I could use to lay all the verses into. Later in the day the arrangement was primitive but good enough for me to formulate the basic song. Two days later, Yippee Ki Yay was smooth enough to begin recording all the vocals in the Tracking Room. One week later, Hippie Hut Studios gave birth to Yippee Ki Yay, a heavy weight song that is destined to top the charts!
Below are the lyrics to Yippee Ki Yay:
Peace and love
The G.O.P.
YIPPEE KI YAY
By The G.O.P.
If you’re living your life
Like a well-adjusted puppet
Cut the strings right now
and throw ‘em in a bucket
To set yourself free,
And really start livin’
Treat ya brothas and ya sistas
To some freestyle givin’
PRECHORUS
All your life you live a lie
never satisfied
What you want is peace of mind
That’s how we are designed
CHORUS
Go ahead
Makin’ their day
All your love
Give it away
It’s not about you
Hear what I say
Let ya ego die hard
Yippee Ki Yay
So how are ya feelin’
In your day to day livin’
Is it all a bed of roses
Or ya need to be forgivin’
If you wanna break free
And have a new perception
Turn your life around now
Make givin’ your direction
PRECHORUS
All your life you live a lie
never satisfied
What you want is peace of mind
That’s how we are designed
CHORUS
Go ahead
Makin’ their day
All your love
Give it away
It’s not about you
Hear what I say
Let ya ego die hard
Yippee Ki Yay
Is your life a big selfie
And you’re feelin’ blue and gray
Turn your iphone around
So it points the other way
Take the focus off a you
Make givin’ your agenda
Take your silly social media
And throw it in the river
PRECHORUS
All your life you live a lie
never satisfied
What you want is peace of mind
That’s how we are designed
CHORUS
Go ahead
Makin’ their day
All your love
Give it away
It’s not about you
Hear what I say
Let ya ego die hard
Yippee Ki Yay
It’s not about you
Hear what I say
Let ya ego die hard
Yippee Ki Yay
It’s not about you
Hear what I say
Let ya ego die hard
Yippee Ki Yay
