MIA, electronic music’s walking hipster cache, has revealed something about her creative processes. Something that I wish she’d let remain completely anonymous.
MIA makes music that crosses boundaries, enchants millions, and also manages to sound like a dying cat in the process. I’m not going to say that all MIA fans I’ve met are next-to-insufferable hipsters, but we’ll say a lot of them are. Add to that a clothing line, whilst raging against capitalism, and an engagement to a billionaire liquor heir, and you might say to yourself, “Hey, she seems like an opportunist.” And I think you’d be right.
And instead of singing songs about revolution, and disarray in developing nations, she’s now writing songs like, “I’m Down Like Your Internet Connection.” About customer service issues. A title clearly swagger-jacked from Pete Wentz. And then got Filipino Verizon workers to sing the hook. I’m sure the Filipino Verizon workers were thrilled to be hanging out, and working on an MIA record, but here’s hoping that one of them was like, “Seriously, could you keep working with Diplo? I might just be a Filipino Verizon worker, but I know talent.” In her own words:
“I was having issues with my cable and wireless, and I was on the phone [with tech support] for three hours, and I thought, ‘Maybe this needs to be part of my music’…”
I’ve been trapped with tech support many times, but never did I let the hipster part of my brain take over to where I was like, “Oh, this would make an awesome song.” You know what MIA reminds me of? A model U.N. representative. With a microphone.
Burn your sweaters. Burn them.
lol you like diplo