Praise You

Released as the third single from You've Come a Long Way, Baby on 4 January 1999, it went to number one in the UK and Iceland, number four in Canada, number six in Ireland and number 36 in the US. Cook found the vocal on a bootleg bought at a Camden stall, the opening of Camille Yarbrough's 1975 Take Yo' Praise from the album The Iron Pot Cooker. He matched it to a piano riff from a JBL demonstration record, which was the rehearsal of a band before recording a tune. In his words the sum of the parts became a third song.

Fitting the two took work. Cook played the Yarbrough record at plus seven on his turntable to get it in tune, which left it out of time, so he chopped it into pieces in the S950 and stretched each line. The piano comes from a JBL session for Hoyt Axton's Captain America, and a snatch of Axton humming the melody can be heard on the album version. Pitchfork called the song the album's emotional reset, a Sunday-morning comedown with a disco clop, and noted that Yarbrough began sending Cook Christmas cards once the royalties arrived. In 2021 Yarbrough said she liked the track and that Cook kept the essence of her song.

Video and live

Spike Jonze directed the video with Roman Coppola, starring as Richard Koufey with the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group. It was shot guerrilla-style outside the Fox Bruin Theater in Westwood, Los Angeles, and reportedly cost US$800. Jonze made it after he could not work on the video for The Rockafeller Skank and sent Cook a dance tape as a gift instead. It won Breakthrough Video, Best Direction and Best Choreography at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, where the dancers joined Cook for a performance. In 2001 viewers voted it the best video of all time in a poll marking MTV's 20th anniversary.