The 10 Best M.I.A. Songs
M.I.A. reshaped the landscape of pop, world music, and representation. These tracks are the ones that did it best.
Tristan Young @talltristan
In the mid 2000s, MIA –the project of Mathangi Arulpragasam- fought back against the definitions of world music. Long since derided as late stage hipster indulgence, all of a tonal affront to our melodic sensibilities, the murkily outlined genre was always treated as something of a joke in the mainstream. With her dense and rich discography, MIA redefined what something as nebulous as world music could mean, and how it could fit within our pop culture proclivities. Indeed she was uniquely equipped to do this; born in Sri Lanka, raised in London, subjected to a litany of different kinds of racism and prejudice, MIA has developed an omnivorous cultural dialect that few can match. While cultural appropriation abounds in most forms of music at their nadir of creative sincerity, MIA finds meaningful, and indeed wildly entertaining intersections between the politics, tragedies, and attendant musical & instrumental expressions that form a lattice over our fractured world. Let’s look at the 10 best tracks in her eclectic and vivid body of work.
10. Amazon
In an early example of MIA’s subversion of stylistic genre markers, Amazon masquerades as a humid and hedonistic bout of seductive RnB, despite the fact that it deals in human trafficking. The rhythmic hypnotism of the beat parleys naturally into the exotic dynamism of the land the she is excavating on a rhetorical level. She merges intrigue and threat so seamlessly to the point where it’s up to debate if she is warning or enticing. Her pacing is slightly docile and timid as she hurriedly whispers, “painted nails, sunsets on horizons/somewhere in the Amazon they’re holding me ransom”, almost to suggest an ominous layer of coercion and submission, perfectly aligning with the nature of the song’s subject matter. You can sense the respect she has for the innate beauty of the land, but that correlates concerningly into an almost Stockholm Syndrome type read on her situation, “bodies started merging and the lines got gray now I’m looking at him thinking maybe he’s okay”. As she repeats that last line she gets more adventurous in her delivery and the coquettish percussion amplifies. It signals that the land and the experience is changing her. For better or worse is not the point, only that it’s inevitable- a not so subtle dig at how globalization can consume even the shadiest of black markets or untouched of lands.
9. Jimmy
It takes an unwavering sense of vision and confidence to keep a track like Jimmy from sounding straight up ridiculous, but MIA pulls it off. Sampling the skittish Bollywood anthem Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aja, MIA turns it into a deliriously animated banger of a track. Like much of her best work, her aim is to highlight pop culture frivolity and how it contrasts with deathly serious real world influences. Their convalescence into a single piece of work is arousing in its illumination and condemnation. This track is actually a wild anecdote about a trip MIA took with a war photographer mostly just because she liked him. “When you go Rwanda, Congo/ when you go on your suicide tour/ take me on a truck to Darfur, take me where you would go”, is a hell of a way to land what is essentially a pick up line. Jimmy is excellent in the way MIA seamlessly transitions back and forth between ludicrous theatricality in the forms of wild swings of sharp string instrumentation and fluttering arpeggios, to deeply enthralling romanticism of a post modern variety, “hit me on AIM tryna flip me on some game/ are you coming, are you going, are you leaving, are you staying?” That the whole patchwork melody is overlaid on top of the pulsing heft of what could essentially be Blind by Hercules and Love Affair gives it an unrelenting and infectious momentum. Hope it worked out between her and the guy!
8. XR2
No song has any right to be as fun as XR2 is. Ostensibly just a fun anecdote about ripping around London with her mates in the eponymous whip, the sound design that inundates you with ratcheting and staccato horn blares is wild. The dialling down, amping up, and playing around with output intensity makes for something highly variable and unpredictable. It’s dauntingly severe at times, as MIA seems to extract some mild pleasure from inundating your senses in this one, but the exhilaration of the whole thing is undeniable by the end. She adds another layer of surreal destabilization with her oddly salient but low as possible on the audible register mumble rapping. Her voice ripples through each syllable with an automated sense of detachment, “this is how we do in the XR2/ the boys look fine, stereos Alpine”. Her vocals innocuously slide so close to the low end of your sensory perception but it proves to be a creative and welcome rejoinder to the instrumental insanity of the fervent brass. The claptrap of percussion insures that despite the bewildering melody, your body understands exactly how to lock into the rhythm. Her sultry whispers, “whistle whistle blow blow/ here we here we go go”, adds so much texture and dimension to what was already a tesseract of a song. Who knew 1992 was this fun?
7. $10
We really see MIA embrace her underground dance hall ambitions in $10. With a kinetic and rapturous beat she throws her whole body behind each wail and chant that perforates the rhythm. Switching between English and Sri Lankan likely obscures the story she tells in the song, but that’s partly the point- that the lives of other people are fundamentally unknowable, so be careful about how you judge them. MIA details the mixture of tragedy and opportunity in the lives of child prostitutes, in that all it takes is $10 for them to be able to assert their independence and break free from the perpetual cycle of poverty- if only briefly. Between the bright and snappy 808s, distorted drone snarls and MIA’s rhythmic wail, the track is something of a sensory overload, but one that ebbs and flows with an impressive air of grace. There’s an aristocratic and luxurious bent to the production that represents the aspirational determination of the most discarded members of our society, succinctly articulated when she boasts, “Lolita was a man eater/ clocked him like a taximeter/ fuck gold she’s a platinum digger”. The elaborate and curvaceous flow to the melody becomes so embedded throughout the song that it’s highly jarring when she breaks free from its contours, snapping “what can I get for $10, anything you want!” Disrupting as that breakthrough is, it’s an invigorating and fitting conclusion to a tale about escaping the bounds of poverty by any means necessary.
6. Born Free
Possibly the most intimidatingly intense song on this list- and that’s saying something- Born Free is a calamitous entanglement of distortion and acceleration. From that torrent however, comes exhilaration. Dense, pounding drums cycle through faster and faster iterations until they diffuse entirely into a wave form of sonic static and decay. MIA’s voice swells from this refracted gauntlet, sounding like we’ve never heard her before. Her voice booms and echoes with the import of a great orator, but she’s obfuscated by that same distortive field. It sounds like an unearthed speech, exhumed from the archives of a forgotten or defunct movement, one ready to resurface into relevancy. Aside from the slightly more profound interpretations, the occasional break in the chaos for her to let out a coy little “woo” is a lit of fun. MIA casts herself as part of the downtrodden and economically depressed all over the world, looking up at the literal towers of the elite. However she does not contextualize this as misfortune, but the source of her, and all of our power. “With my nose to the ground, I found my sound”, she announces, and the thicket of noise just briefly pops in the most satisfying of ways giving way for MIA to shift in to a far more loquacious mood. She rapid fires the lines, “got myself an interview tomorrow/got myself a jacket for a dollar”, suggesting that this metaphorical ecosystem that Born Free is comprised of is not oppression, but power. She ascends to one of the best choruses of her career in terms of intend and design, “I don’t wanna live for tomorrow, I’ll push my life today/ I’ll throw this in your face when I see ya, I got something to say”. Through all that rapturous distortion, she finds some clarity. Warning- the video is extremely graphic.
5. Bamboo Banger
Bamboo Banger is perhaps the best representation of the melting pot aesthetic of MIA’s sound. While perhaps uncharacteristically subtle at first, there is so much fascinating layering at play here. Mechanized and industrial steel drums are evocative of a cold and barren mindset, something MIA initially backs up with her glossed over and cynical sedation in the opening sequence. There are hints of life in her as she occasionally elongates the odd word or phrase. That sense of detached ambiguity in her voice takes on something more recognizable- focus and concentration. While she may be holding off on her theatricality, she is intently burrowing through each line. The perfunctory thumping of the base starts to modulate a little and you can sense an awakening in her on the horizon. We get that reveal in one of her best written lines to date, “Now I’m sitting down chilling on gun powder/ strike match, light fire/ who’s that girl called Maya?” The drums perk up and the melody swells with bravado assisted with a healthy sampling of the works of Indian/Tamali film composer Ilayaraja. She also mixes in a reworking of Roadrunner by Modern Lovers, signalling her commitment to creatively splicing and synthesizing constructs from seemingly incongruous source materials. Bamboo Banger is one of MIA’s most salient statements of intent, and of what she intends to do with her platform.
4. Paper Planes
There’s a valid claim to Paper Planes being the most iconic and recognizable of all of MIA’s work. With its Caribbean washed and soothing vibes, but also one of the most acute and striking samples of gun fire in a modern track, it’s a triumph of her continual pursuit of forcing the 1st and 3rd world into a messy coexistence, where they can no longer avoid each other. Much like Amazon, a song that carries the unbothered air of natural beauty and reinvigoration is instead more interested in a local cabal of thieves that will kill you for petty cash and maybe your passport. There is an uncharacteristic glee in her voice as she sings, “All I wanna do is take your money”; that seemingly sincere sweetness rendered all the more perverse by sarcastically celebrating the underbelly of the exploitive tourism industry. It’s iconoclastic bonafides get a boost from them sampling Straight To Hell by The Clash, themselves pioneers in occasionally rendering horrid subject matter in nominally affable terms. MIA solidifies her place in zeitgeist of 2000s alt pop with the line, “MIA third world democracy/ yeah, I’ve got more records than the KGB”, which is a hype line worthy of preserving for the ages. Beyond the ego of it all is, when she sings, “I was skulls and bones”, you can sense a listless memorializing, stripped of all irony and derision. As if for a brief moment, whatever injustices and insecurities MIA had to survive as a child on the run, she can still sense the personal nostalgia in it. It makes Paper Planes one of the most subtly revealing songs about MIA, no doubt why it’s also the most cathartic.
Bonus Round: As good as the original version is, the DFA remix is somehow even better.
3. Bad Girls
If there’s one song that can eclipse Paper Planes in terms of impact and relevancy it’s Bad Girls. Before even getting into the song- good lord that video is a hell of a thing. Never lacking in near obnoxious levels of bravado, MIA is more confident and assured than anywhere else in her discography on this track. The control and sway she effortlessly asserts over a monster of a beat is stunning. Bringing what we likely think of as Middle Eastern music into the fold with vivid fidelity, bolstered by multiplex percussion and an overall ear for brilliant sound design, Bad Girls is unmistakable and impossible to imitate. She takes regional sounds and aesthetics, synonymous with a people an entire generation was told to not to trust by our leaders, and shows just how much more fun they can have. MIA merges the momentous and swelling gravity of the beat with immaculately precise hooks; this is no better articulated then when she absolutely nails the weight and force behind the line, “Suki Suki, I’m coming in the Cherokee, gasoline”. With the hypnotic repetition, over the kind of music that could entrance a serpent no less, “Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well”, is the kind of line that maybe speaks to one demographic but encourages all walks of life to eagerly latch on to. For all of its confrontational posturing, Bad Girls became one of the most feverish and inclusive anthems of the tale end of the 2000s.
2. Galang
It may not have technically started with Galang, but for many it was our earliest introduction to the neophyte artist, and it was a revelation. Irreverent, snarky, disreputable, and damn proud of it, Galang signalled that MIA didn’t care much about how cultural representations were supposed to work. Leaning into London underground house, sleazy hooks, and the pent up malaise of hyper urbanization, MIA painted a picture of a riotous night out going a bit sideways like no had done before. Proudly accentuating her Sri Lankan upbringing in her pronunciations, she merges the drudgery of everyday nightlife with exotic hues of neon and iridescent intrigue, all set to a punchy snarl of a beat. You can almost see the black light under carriage of cars illuminating a rain slicked street as she barks, “who the hell is hounding you in the BMW/ how the hell’d he find you, 147’d you/ the feds gonna get you, pull the strings on the hood/ one paranoid youth blazing through the hood”. That specific sense of paranoia and heightened sense of all perceived threats is paramount to Galang’s edge. MIA is at this point in time a rebellious young adult into fast cars and loud music, but she’s not that far removed yet really from being a child forced to live in the woods, on the run as the Sri Lankan military hunted her and her family. That primal fear, one that she has focused and weaponized takes over in the dazzling climax, ejecting any lyrics for stunning and incantatory howls. What a banger.
1. $20
Conceptually speaking, $20 is an absolute embarrassment of riches. The level of creativity and ambition in merging so many disparate sonic elements into something surprisingly, astonishingly, cohesive is a marvel. Before one even dives into the subject matter of the song, even the schematic break down is nuts. On the forefront she samples the chorus from Pixies classic Where Is My Mind, yet all of the whimsical pondering is ejected, annexed by dire, desperate pleading. For all of the bravado and churlish hijinks MIA so naturally embraces, she’s never felt so deathly serious as she does in $20. It suits her remarkably well. What’s slightly less obvious is the under laying beat is a straight lift from the classic New Order track Blue Monday, slowed down to near molasses and with the granular decay ratcheted up to nerve wracking levels. Once you know to listen for it it’s unavoidable. She supplants the unorthodox and alien reinterpretation of the pop sequence with exaggerated choral chants; it may sound melodramatic in theory but the track carries such a sincere grandiosity that it works without coming off as saccharine or overwrought. $20 serves as a central thesis statement for much of MIA’s worldview and early work; that in a globalized world the disequilibrium at the center of the trade off between the 1st and 3rd world is an unforgivable crime. The developed world imports the aspects of other cultures we find commodifiable, and we export our taste for war and blood shed into their homes, only to call them the savages. This amoral dynamic is one of the few things that can make MIA sound wounded and angry, which she purposes to great effect. “Do you know the cost of AKs in Africa? $20 aint shit to you but that’s how much they are”- MIA contrasts our economics of frivolity with the very same currency being the only means of survival for the impoverished in a world that we designed to kill the them. MIA takes the terms of cultural appropriation & exploitation and, with a strong sense of condemnation, vows to reverse the terms of them. She’ll beat the purveyors of such luxury and privilege at their own game. She may have been born in the dirt, but she can work harder and smarter, market herself better, and exploit their culture for her purposes. There is a hint of revenge in her tone. She wants pay back on behalf of, well a lot of people. $20 is at once a threat, and her making good on it.