Yang Yang (song)
"Yang Yang" is a song by Yoko Ono, originally released in 1972 on the album Approximately Infinite Universe, and on the B-side to "Death of Samantha". The song was later included on Ono's compilation albums Walking on Thin Ice and Onobox. In 2002, as part of the ongoing ONO remix project, the track was re-released and reached #17 on the US dance charts, nearly 30 years after original release.
Themes explored
The song's titular character, a powerful man who talks to "his world" and to himself by telephone, abuses both the women (whom he "owns") and the men (sending them "pebbles and stones") in his charge. The lyrics deal with feminism, the emotional distance and cruelty sometimes shown by men, and the dehumanizing of both sexes.
Later critical reception
Pitchfork Media's Jess Harvell stated, "On Orange Factory's 'Down and Dirty' remix of 'Yang Yang', Ono is vocodered into a Troutman-esque gremlin and blurred into an anonymous orgasmic sigh over a brutally functional garage bounce." Dan Rapper, in his review of Open Your Box for PopMatters, opined that the Orange Factory remix "is turned into a straight vocoder-style Ministry of Sound track, its squelching electro already somehow tired-sounding."