M.I.A. » Tracks

10 Dollar (4:02)

412,424 plays (84,296 listeners)

51 shouts

Buy at Amazon MP3 ($0.99) More options
Add to my Library Share More
What inspired her to write the song & what is the background?

“When I was like 5-years-old in India, I got to sing this nursery rhyme and win the first prize . I won a bucket, because they always give you prizes that are really, really useful for poor people at home. You’d get a bucket or a broom or a mat. So when I went home, I just always remembered this song . . . So when I tried to do a song, Richard X asked me if I knew any Tamil, and I was like, “Yeah, I speak fluent Tamil.” And then I went in there with some ideas that I wanted to do something really Tamil on this song, you know. So I did the first , the “hey, hey” bit, which to me sounded really Tamil. I was trying to get in touch with that part of me. And then it so happened that the whole content of this song turned into this thing about dial-a-brides on the internet. You could get girls that come over and marry people for visas. I felt like it was such a third world issue thing to have to live with; women thinking like that and having that sort of mentality. And I really wanted to articulate what that nursery rhyme meant at the time, ‘cause I never knew it. And when my mom told me that’s what it was about, then I wrote the song about it.”

“It’s basically - Brahman kids are like Catholic kids; they’re really strict. And being a Brahman in India is the highest caste you could be, and they’re really religious. In India there’s a stereotype that loads of street prostitutes are all Brahman kids that ran away.
Read more… Edit
Play M.I.A. Radio

Video

Added by cassiehasthebeat

m.i.a at palladium

Share Video

Flag as incorrect

See 3 more

Related Tracks

See more

Albums featuring this track


Shouts

Leave a comment. Log in to Last.fm or sign up (it’s free).
See all 51 shouts
We don’t have any tracks to play on this page.

Listeners

See more

Recent Activity

Related Journals

See more