“Ya Love” is a simple pop song about a shared feeling of affection between two people which calls back to “Black Hot Soup,” as well as sets up the title track of Butterfly 3000.
The origins of “Ya Love” actually predate Butterfly 3000, as it was originally a demo created by Cookie. Stu said in a Stereogum interview, “Cookie [AKA guitarist Cook Craig] wrote most of the musical elements, and it wasn’t meant for this record. He sent a demo to me a long time ago, before the pandemic. I instantly gravitated towards it, but I couldn’t finish it. It just didn’t feel right until we started making this record. And I thought, ‘oh yeah, there’s that Cookie song that has that nice feeling’ and has the same energy that a lot of the other songs on this record have. And we kind of reworked it to be in the same world as the other songs. There’s a polyrhythmic kind of element with the keyboards and the drums being in different time signatures, and there’s some extra-arpeggiated synths that come in. As soon as we started putting the musical elements together, it started to feel really obvious what I should sing about. I was about to have a kid and I was feeling insanely excited about that, and just feeling excited about the future. It’s just an honest track.”
He also explained the song’s purpose within the album’s running order: “I guess, thematically, ‘Ya Love’ is like, ‘I’m going through this change and I’m the butterfly,’ and ‘Butterfly 3000’ is kind of like ‘It’s time for my daughter to be a butterfly and spread her wings and be free.’ That’s why there is that anxiety attached to the lyrics, because that sentiment is kind of scary. But ultimately, it’s still pretty exciting. And I think it wraps the record up in the way it was meant to.”
The song was recorded by Ambrose (percussion/vocals), Cavs (drums), Cook (Mellotron/bass/synthesizer) and Stu (vocals/drums/synthesizer/acoustic guitar/bass), and is the only song on Butterfly 3000 to feature a songwriting credit from Cook. It was released on June 11th, 2021 with a full album video filmed at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles released on the 24th.
On August 24th, 2021, the music video for “Ya Love,” created by Jason Galea, was released. It features the band in multi-colored space suits on the surface of an unknown planet (possibly Mars) beside a crashed ship. They see a gator in a red robe who catches and releases a yellow butterfly. which the band chase. What follows is a string of psychedelic landscapes ranging from gators walking around mushroom towers to the band hiding in cocoons.
The video features a number of references to past and (then) future music and iconography. Include in these references is a floating castle (a callback to “The Castle In The Air” from Polygondwanaland) while another scene depicts the band riding a rollercoaster on a magenta mountain — a year before the release of Omnium Gatherum.
“Ya Love” was the first of two videos done by Galea for Butterfly 3000 (the second being the title track) and took over a year to create; starting in March of 2020 and ending in August of 2021. In an interview with It’s Nice That he called the video tedious to create but “a good experience,” noting his ability to weave together imagery that gets fans theorizing: “[it’s] fun to see the theories and sleuthing unfold, there are often visual links that come up which I hadn’t realised myself, and work pretty seamlessly.”
Like all Butterfly 3000 videos, it would be featured on the Blu-Ray Butterfly 3000: Ocular Edition. The video would be referenced on the poster for 2022-04-19.
For the remix album Butterfly 3001, “Ya Love” was given three new versions.
The first is the “Héctor Oaks playing w/ Fire Mix” which features heavy bass throughout and heavily edited vocals.
The Flaming Lips version of the song (“Flaming Lips’ Fascinating Haircut Re-Do”) features a new song structure with easygoing acoustic guitars and bass reminiscent of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1.”
The third version is the Geneva Jacuzzi Remix and is yet again given a new structure with new instrumental breaks featuring discordant vocals and some infectious verse sections.
“Ya Love” has never been played live.