Pop music tends to be a large, changing landscape where Top 40 rules and the meanings aren't often relevant. In a way, M.I.A.'s rise to fame has been a great antithesis to the Top 40 format by exploiting world music with electronic and dancehall music and trying to sing about more important things, notably geopolitical. Few artists have come out of the past decade and has managed to strike an interesting balance between art and power while continuing to be distinctive and aggressively captivating. She even played at the Super Bowl with Madonna, which if that isn't proof of her success, then nothing is. However, her latest album "Matangi" blurs the line too much of what made her exciting and what makes Top 40 so disposable.
From a lyrical standpoint, M.I.A. is still the same as she ever was. Rattling off countries in the title track, she establishes the typical world order and desire to make a difference. Even if her personality seems to be more about establishing herself as a menace, she makes an effort to at least do it in a way that feels embracing of her Sri Lankan background. Even if there aren't as blunt of messages here as on her previous albums, she doesn't seem jaded and doesn't try to tackle themes that would make her seem insincere or dishonest. She even addresses the Super Bowl event, in which a middle finger caused extreme backlash. While her choice to disregard the move as yoga, it does feel nice to see her able to address her own history.
The issue lies more in the production. Where her style used to feel more inspired by world music, relying on strange sources of percussion and rhythm, she has progressively moved into a less inspired area. Using electronic music, she makes everything sound like a dance song that drowns out the lyrics into a monotonous flow. At first it is pleasant, but it slowly begins to make it hard to distinguish one track from the next, save for a few cuts. Her quest to be a menace also doesn't help the case and her aggressive nature mixed with pop aesthetics just feels tonally confused.
There are traces of the familiar musical touches that made her interesting. With tribal chants and sitars, she does acknowledge world music, though it has been greatly reduced so that she could sing over dance beats. Along with being indistinguishable, they just don't work because they aren't interesting or fresh. She may still sound unique, but it almost feels like she is sacrificing her sound instead of experimenting in order to reach a wider audience. Even if the content still feels a little outside of the Top 40 realm, it does feel like an attempt to do a roundabout political lecture during a boogie.
Even then, the lyrical content isn't as distinct as it has been. Besides her being a nuisance, there doesn't seem to be any strong topical songs, or at least none as memorable as "Paper Planes" or "Bucky Done Gun" that demand attention with a different sound and catchy choruses that inexplicably get the themes stuck in your head. While she claims that she doesn't need to say a lot to get a point across, it doesn't feel like she says enough in a clever enough way to mean much of anything. It almost feels like everything was sacrificed for a pallet of bouncy sounds that theoretically keeps the album from feeling like a waste.
In fact, the only real standout song that sounds different from the electronic music is her lead single "Bad Girls," which is lyrically simple, but preaches a desire for rebellion because "Bad girls do it well." There is an energy and sincerity there that grabs the listener and hypnotically gets them in the mood. While other songs like "Come Walk With Me" have their moments, they feel like few and far between. On "Y.A.L.A.," there are references to yoyos and Julianne Moore. At this point, M.I.A. does feel like she is trying to appeal to the general public maybe a little too hard.
This is only her fourth album, so hopefully this isn't a sign of a departure but just a misstep. As "Bad Girls" and "Come Walk With Me" suggests, she is still capable of making world music mixed with pop accessible, fun, and important. The only problem is that sometimes on "Matangi," the production overpowers everything about it and we lose the sense of the artist. It becomes a 58 minute wall of sound, sticking you in a trance that comes and goes in keeping its muster. There isn't too much distinctive track-to-track, but as a whole, M.I.A. still stands for something, though I wish that she was clearer on what that was.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
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