Just an hour ago, MIA released a preview of a track entitled “Come Walk With Me” on her YouTube account, and again, it is equally a declaration of her artistic identity as it is an off-kilter club banger. It begins and ends with glitchy, trippy psychedelic instrumental breakdowns heavily reminiscent of her work on 2010’s Vicki Leekx Mixtape (a few of the beats here are lifted off of it too, but there are like 6 different beats in this 1 and a half minute preview alone), except they’re sped up and far more haphazard for extra weirdness, which is really ironic (OMG hipsters are going to freak) considering the song has a bubblegum tune that sounds almost like a Katy Perry or Ke$ha cut — which, among other things, cement MIA’s embrace of the anti-popstar identity she so defiantly reinvented herself as 2 years ago with /\/\/\Y/\.
Just for kicks, there is a self-knowing stab at self-empowerment here (“There’s nothing that can touch me now/You can’t even break me now”), which feels vaguely like a sarcastic parody of Perry’s “Part of Me”. She even deliberately, squarely subverts the recent trend of club-oriented lyrics in pop music with an ironic declaration of hipster unity (“You ain’t gotta shake it just to be with me/You ain’t gotta throw your hands in the air/Cuz tonight we ain’t actin like we don’t care”).
The “Birthday Song”-esque, poppy vibe of the song almost confirms tepid or at best lukewarm reviews from Pitchfork again, but then again Pitchfork-worshipping hipsters don’t make up much of the market; pop-lovers and music-lovers do. M.I.A. here combines the straightforward catchiness of “XXXO” with the outright weirdness of her less accessible tracks like “Meds and Feds” to produce one of the most addictive, ironic and baffling pop tracks in recent history. If this track is any indication of what to expect from her new album, be prepared for M.I.A. to take the pop charts and perhaps even the Grammys by storm. I mean, if the two are more than ready to embrace Katy Perry, why not her weirder, infinitely more talented, pop-parodying counterpart?
I’m really excited for the new album.
therein, Therin. 