I Fly Like Paper Get High Like Planes

If you have been living in a cave, or crawl space for the past year you may not know M.I.A. But the rest of us know her as the energetic, charismatic ball of controversy who sings the song Paper Planes “All I want to do is…bang…bang…bang…bang…bang…bang…cock.click.ching…and take your money”! Yes! That song! And it is the cheeriest, playground, gangsta rap single I think I’ve ever sung along to.

Saturday night at Coachella she took to the big stage with both guns blazing. Her style and sound so uniquely her own that you have to perk your ears up and have a listen. She owned that crowd. From the second that the first beat dropped, the flood of lights and patterns illuminated the night. God help you if you can’t handle strobes. Florescent, glowing seams lined her clothes as well as the dancers that accompanied her. For a minute I thought to myself, oh lord this could be so cheesy, so remnicent of the 80′s, so busy. But once again, I got schooled. She owns it and it becomes immediately clear, M.I.A. is just way cooler than you. Well, cooler than me for certain.

Encouraging the crowd to interact with her show she threw out horns that could be heard all the way in Arizona. Then she made a move that probably got her fined, by inviting the common folks down in front to come up on stage and dance. Maybe 60 or more people ran up and started bouncing around like only the drunk and dehydrated can. On the jumbo screens you could see one opportunistic young man run right up to her with his camera and snapped a shot of his face beside hers, like it was at the mall or something. Dude…seriously?

One truly lucky fan actually had M.I.A.’s full permission to be onstage the entire set because she won the priveledge at the Global Inheritance 18 & up exhibit. The non-profit had transformed 7 golf carts to alternative forms of energy and each one had paid homage to a musical act involved in some way with Coachella this year. Beside the cart dedicated to M.I.A. they held a paper planes competition, where you made a plane out of recycled paper then threw it at a target for the chance to win. I think being on the main stage at Coachella with an international super star just might be a big deal, if you know, you are into that sort of thing.

Words by Barbie Brady, photos by Fever Dragon