Well, at least it wasn’t Britney Spears bad. Anyone out there who’s been reading all my posts on rapper M.I.A., but hadn’t really heard her music, and decided to check her out on Letterman tonight, now you think I’m nuts. Yes, you’re right, it was terrible. I stayed tuned in all the way through Martha Stewart’s segment just to see M.I.A. make her Letterman debut, and to say it was disappointing is an understatement, but I don’t know if it was necessarily her fault. She performed “Paper Planes,” a Clash-sampling highlight from the new album Kala, but something was wrong with the mix, and you could barely hear her or the backup vocalist. I get the sense that maybe they were running her mic through the DJ rig, because his scratching on the gunshot FX was so loud it seemed to knock the sound out a few times. Even worse, when the prerecorded backup vocals came in during the chorus, they were so much louder than M.I.A.’s live vocals they made her seem like she was, well, relying on prerecorded vocals. Poor M.I.A.! And if you’ve never heard her before, please give her another chance.
[update 9/17] Video below. People are reporting that she was not allowed to use gunshot sounds during her performance, so those are apparently just gunshot-like percussive noises.
