The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #123

#123: "Paper Planes" (2007) - M.I.A.

Even under a new administration, and even with the recession and the swine flu capturing everyone's attention currently, Americans--and most of the world--are still concerned with the war/military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that concern still carries with it an anciallary xenophobia as well as worry for our soldiers in those countries who sometimes have to face military insurgants under the age of twelve. Couple these fears with the recent urban anxiety over killer cops and cop killers, and the result is a widening disparity between social classes.

In "Paper Planes," M.I.A. reflects this disparity, feeds it, provokes it, acting as a catalyst, not merely reporting on the undercurrents in the world's hotspots, but gleefully bucking the establishment (and not just of America). "All I wanna do is BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM and CLICK CLICK and take your money" she sings in the chorus. The onomatopoeia there isn't onomatopoeia; the words are aurally replaced with sound effects for (respectively) shotgun shots and guns being cocked. To magnify the situation, she doesn't sing alone on the chorus: she's got a chorus of children singing with her. She singsongs the verses, tossing them off as if they're nursery rhymes.

It's frightening, the ease she brings to this song, as if terrorism and crime are matter-of-fact. In some parts of the world, though, they are.

At the end of Prince's "1999," a child asks, "Mommy...why does everybody have a bomb?" In "Paper Planes," it's the mother that's doing the asking.