Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

[SONGS OF THE DECADE] #5 M.I.A. – Paper Planes

Posted on | December 26, 2009 | No Comments

SONGS OF THE DECADE #5

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

M.I.A. – Paper Planes (2007)

M.I.A.M.I.A. via last.fm

One of the few unanswerable questions that has always plagued sampling was whether the main appeal was the element of the original recording. Certain sampling “pioneers” eschewed that question in a desperate rush for attention of today’s dog eat dog music world. M.I.A. may have accidentally found the right answer: what if an artist used a dominant sample to make a song that was better than its source? M.I.A. may not yet have surpassed the Clash’s vitality to pop history, though she’s getting close. Nonetheless, if you try listening to “Straight To Hell” after “Paper Planes,” M.I.A. kicks Joe Strummer’s butt, pure and simple.

M.I.A. has been commended by polemicists for merging punk and hip-hop culture for a new generation of young, global American working class. Musicians and critics love her because she’s as good a beat artist as the Dust Brothers and as good a singer as Nina Simone. The world loves her for all of that, and more. In a perfect world, I’d be putting this song at #1 in my revisionist songs of this decade list in the future. We’ll see what the world has in store for the next decade, but at least in art, slumdogs can become millionaires.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > >

Comments

Leave a Reply





Anti-Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree