The Official Someone Will Head South Song of the Year: M.I.A. – “Paper Planes”

No need for votes, I made the decision. This song is one of the best musical things I’ve heard this year. If you don’t think it’s catchy and wonderfully infectious, you probably lack a soul or a sense of humor. Similarly, if you know me and you haven’t heard this song yet (by which I mean I haven’t played it for you), then we must not be very close or maybe I don’t like you too much. Here’s the charming video. Watch for Ad-Rock and MCA’s cameo at the 2:56 mark.  As I saw M.I.A. on Halloween and with my paltry digital equipment was unable to capture a decent video of the performance,  I have supplemented such footage with a Pitchfork-supplied video from her current UK tour. Get excited, Afrikan Boy is in it. 

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Are you English? Do you want to tell me about love and desire?

It’s been two seasons since Lily Allen’s debut came out in the states, and though I wasn’t looking for a similar genre-ized female British pop artist, I stumbled across Kate Nash much to my delight. The two videos below can be viewed as the respective ends of a relationship – “Pumpkin Soup” being the desirous, confused beginning and “Foundations” being the tragic though inevitable end – or perhaps they can be alternately interpreted as I have placed them in the post, as a signpost for the end and a song from the aftermath.

“Foundations”

“Pumpkin Soup”

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Words to savor.

Last night I saw “No Country For Old Men.” I closed my eyes for the last monologue and listened. Tommy Lee Jones talked about two dreams he had recently. This is what I heard:

Two of ‘em. Both had my father. It’s peculiar. I’m older now’n he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he’s the younger man. Anyway, first one I don’t remember so well but it was about money and I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and snowin, hard ridin. Hard country. He rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin goin by. He just rode on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down, and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. Out there up ahead.

Achingly, terrifyingly beautiful. Reminds me of that Joanna Newsom line, “Life is thundering blissful towards death.”

Thanks to Chris Bradley for the tip/transcription on this one.

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sometimes you have steal the words from others because the ones you have aren’t quite right.

I heard this song tonight. The lyrics seemed to sort of fit in a way that scared me a little.

Yo La Tengo – “Our Way To Fall”

I remember walking up to you.
I remember my face turned red.
I remember staring at my feet.
I remember before we met.
I remember sitting next to you.
I remember pretending I wasn’t looking…

I remember the song you sang.
I remember the way you look tonight.
I remember the way you made me feel…

Bust me for my cheesiness. Call me a sap.
I double dog dare you.

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