(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Singles: #11: M.I.A. - Paper Planes (2008)

I enjoy being, for lack of a better term, a music treasure hunter. I feel the need to listen to everything, and thanks to the Internet, I could listen to every track touted by blogs, every album that generated buzz, every 7” in a DJ’s playlists. I’m not saying music on the radio isn’t superb, but I just feet like I needed to take control of what I want to listen to. Also, I just believed that there must be something more than what the stations are force-feeding the public with.

Once in a while in a music hunt, I come across gold, like when I got a hold of M.I.A.’s second album, Kala, and moseyed over to the penultimate track,“Paper Planes”. The song dazzled me upon hearing the first couple of notes, so naturally, I listened to it over and over again. I listened to it around a select few and almost of them loved it as well. With that said, as a music treasure hunter, you really don’t want to share your treasure finds too comfortably. It’s selfish and immature, I know. It’s pretty foolish to think that if too many people know about a song, the quality of a song somehow diminishes. But it’s your find, your wonderful little secret! It’s like when too many people discover a hidden bar in the city your group of friends had kept for yourselves. All of a sudden, you go there on a Thursday night, and you have to line-up in the freezing cold to get in, and you annoyingly can’t get a table, and it’s not even fun being there anymore because you don’t want to be surrounded by obnoxious douche bags accumulated by its newfound popularity.

The thing is, you can’t keep a song as monolithic as “Paper Planes” a secret for very long. It samples The Clash’s “Straight To Hell”, and that enough make it sound like a thundering parade. When braced with a simple snap drum track and you get a beat that plenty of rappers are envious of (and plenty, such as Bun B, did take their turns rapping over it on various remixes). Take into account the “Rump Shaker” tie-ins, which are extremely fun to act out and the whole thing sounds like a takeover. So, it wasn’t really suprising that it conquered the world.

It started when it was used as background music for The Pineapple Express movie trailer, taking advantage of its insouciant vibe. Then it was overplayed in Top 40 stations, massively requested by pimple-faced kids, work-bound motorists, and passers-by who thought M.I.A. is pronounced as “mee-yah”. As might be expected, it made its way to the Billboard charts, inching its way to the top, eventually peaking at #3. Then the T.I.-led superpowers of rap took a portion of its vocals and looped it for “Swagga Like Us”. Then the Oscar nominee Slumdog Millionaire used it to soundtrack an adorable montage. In a span of a little less than two months, M.I.A. went from an indie geek crush to a dance floor celebrity.

And then there’s me, not getting any kudos for being one of the first listeners and enjoyers of “Paper Planes”. Now, there’s nothing that separates me from the guys who are firing gunshots and cranking cash registers a year after the song is first heard. Really, though, I’m not really bothered, at least not as much as I would be when a Modest Mouse or a Death Cab For Cutie graduated from indie secrecy at the start of the decade. What should I be frustrated about? Why should I be a proponent of anonymity? I’m taking this in as a verification of my maturity. A tree falling in the woods doesn’t make a sound when no one is around to hear it; M.I.A. not being heard and beloved by millions would have been such a waste of treasure.