[Photo by JONATHAN VALANIA]
POP CESSPOOL: There she is at No. 5 on the Hot 100, riding the coattails of a stoner movie, and I’m mildly thrilled. Now, I’m no Official M.I.A. Booster; since she first bopped out of Diplo’s camp, I’ve been a casual consumer and a quiet skeptic. And other nerds already have found much to analyze in the rise of the weird, gunshotty “Paper Planes,” so I’m not claiming to be throwin’ any lightning bolts here. But I will say this: Part of me wants M.I.A.’s ditty to be another “Teen Spirit” moment — an instance when music changes because one song simultaneously scares the crap out of some people, makes other people laugh and causes unexpectedly large segments of the general public to wonder if similarly interesting songs are hiding somewhere like exotic, screaming, uncatalogued insects. So, yeah, “Paper Planes” is different, and when it comes to the pop charts, different is much rarer thank you think. MORE
M.I.A. & DIPLO: Making Paper Planes
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